Generalised Anxiety or Generalised Fabulousness?!
One of the ways the brain works is by generalising - copying patterns and transferring them to other situations. It uses learning gained in one area and applies it to anything similar. It's an amazing neuroplastic phenomena that conserves glucose and makes the brain efficient.
Generalising isn't bad or good, it's just what the brain does. As a Feldenkrais Practitioner my job is to manipulate generalising for good!
Babies are the grande royal grande poo bum of generalisation. They learn to hold rusks, then a crayon, then utensils, then a pen, then scissors, then a screwdriver, then knitting needs, and needle and thread...
Maybe as a kid you kicked a balloon, then swung a leg to Dolly Parton, then you volley kicked a football into the net for a goal, and then maybe, just maybe, you learnt to tango?!
An Argentinian man once told me Argentinians have two loves. Women and Football. Tango is the union of their loves - football with women ;) That's generalisation!
Sadly however the brain can generalise anxiety... or anger, shame, self loathing.... lots of awful overwhelming experiences.
Generalised Anxiety means anxiety felt in a single discrete moment starts transferring to other areas. Lots of areas! As a (not real life) example - If I experienced panic when a huntsman spider was on the toilet roll in a campground toilet I may then feel anxiety for huntsman spiders, but mostly likely I'll feel anxiety with all spiders, and maybe camp ground toilets? But then maybe it becomes for anything that crawls, and any public toilet, then food scraps in the kitchen, then dirt in the house, and camping generally, then simply anything dirty, then nature and the outdoors become threatening...!
Anxiety starts consuming more and more and more... This is debilitating for anyone experiencing generalised anxiety. Because the brain has become expert at slowly swallowing up your life.
BUT... many kinds of generalising exist. We can generalise balance, maths puzzles, baking, board games, painting, playing instruments..... We all know that insanely musical person who picks up a foreign instrument and plays it having never seen that instrument before! My Dad is one such person. :)
Or we can generalise ease, comfort, calm, confidence, joy, pleasure, playfulness…
I can feel comfortable in one situation, and that feeling can be neurologically transferred to similar actions/situations, growing exponentially till it's overwhelming my life. Now thats my kind of overwhelm!
I could feel calm and loving and joyful playing with a pet, and sense that feeling bleeding over to feeling joy with my children, my partner, my friends, my parents, my work colleagues.... I just feel calm, loving and joyful.
I could feel confident writing about my creative ideas in my diary, then I start speaking to my family and friends, then it generalises to speaking with a colleague, then a mentor, then a superior, then the big wig bossy person! I just feel confident!
Practicing gratitude is a generalising technique. We start by finding one teeny shred of gratitude in a sea of crappy boring things, then we find two, then we've got a bit of a list, then we're catching ourselves all day, thinking, OH MY GOD I am so fricken lucky to be alive!!!
Generalising happens whether we want it or not, it's just what the brain does. But we may need to deliberately engineer Generalised ease, Generalised joy, Generalised fabulousness!
Your brain is perfectly designed to generalise... so just start nudging it toward the generalising you want, once it gets going it'll run away with it... and you'll be overwhelmed with calm and fabulousness!
Image from #Evernow - Now that was fricken fabulous and calming.
Congrats to everyone who bought this event and the #firegarden to life, and in particular the beautiful souls performing #songcircle. Thanks for melting our hearts and welcoming us in to your FABULOUSNESS.