03/04/2021
How can tying yourself to a mast help you accomplish tasks with less anxiety?
The saying comes from an old Greek myth about the hero Ulysses in The Odyssey. He wanted to hear the song of the Sirens, but knew that any man who heard it would go mad and crash the ship into the rocks. So he had his crew tie him up to the mast, promising not to untie him no matter what insane threats he spouted, and then had the crew plug their ears with beeswax. In this way, he was able to accomplish his goal.
Tying yourself to the mast is quite possibly the best move you can make to become your future self- you know, the one that exercises more/eats healthier/reads more/etc. Why is that? It's because your body is an energy-saving organism.
What on earth does that have to do with a man tying himself to a mast? Reasonable question; let me explain. I've been doing this challenge the past month or so where, at the end of my nice, hot shower, I turn the water as cold as it will go and take several deep, slow breaths as I let the water chill my face and chest. And let me tell you, it suuuuucked the first several times. I had this animal response where the non-prefrontal cortex parts of my brain pitched a fit and tried to pump out enough anxiety and "I don't WANNA" energy to get out of it. But, after it didn't work the first few times, it all but disappeared.
Why would it disappear so quickly? Well, it's because the brain is an energy-hungry organ. It takes up 2% of your body weight, but eats about 20% of your energy. It's costly to think, and your body and brain developed in a time where energy was not always readily available. In fact, expending too much could mean death. So, it became very energy efficient; I guess you could even call it "green." This is the whole reason your brain pitches a tantrum at the thought of an icy dip, working on homework, or even calling Microsoft to complain about them charging you for the second year in a row after you've clearly cancelled your Xbox Live membership...
Breathe.
Okay, okay, I'm good.
Now where was I?
Oh, right, so your brain isn't freaking out because those things make you anxious. Rather, you're anxious because those things cost energy. Think about this, and really appreciate how true this is. For those of us with ADHD who see ourselves as hyperactive, this may not seem as obvious at first, but it's actually even more obvious once you start thinking about how different parts of the brain are varied enough that it changes the energy expenditure for us to do certain things versus others, i.e. starting a daunting task versus perseverating on cleaning, organizing, or a game for hours.
Basically, your brain is always going to do the most energy-efficient thing, and when it sees things that look like they might cost more energy, like dealing with Microsoft, it gives you that jolt of anxiety as its way of discouraging the expenditure.
For those of us who have dealt with things like PTSD where that anxiety flares even at incredibly small things, our brains are so tied up in trying to process trauma in a way that doesn't cause a giant traffic jam in our brains that our brain is convinced we don't have spare power to dedicate to other tasks. So, naturally, viola, anxiety and panic.
You might think these are incredibly inefficient ways of accomplishing this goal, and you'd be right. Our brains are stuck in a time when energy was scarce and things like bills were not unavoidable. They could just walk away from the scary thing and go do something else. Walk away from the lion and go find a gazelle. Walk away from the rapids and go find a calmer stream to fish from. This was important for survival.
Now, however, things are different and our brains haven't quite caught up yet. ADHD brains in particular are spectacularly adapted for those long-gone times, so when we are dropped in this world that is time- and task-bound at all hours, we tend to get a bit overwhelmed with all the energy-expenditure required to do these unnatural things.
This ends up with us avoiding tasks, wanting to preserve our energy in case we need to survive a famine, but then despite a history of hundreds of thousands of years, it turns out that we can't actually avoid these tasks! Our poor brains are flabbergasted each time- this isn't what should happen! These things are supposed to be avoidable!
But the truth is, although some tasks are avoidable, some just aren't. Not that you can't ignore rent, bills, homework, etc- you technically can, but that has consequences that you probably won't like. So how do we get our brains to accept that these things are inevitable and get them done without the drama?
The first step here is awareness. Understanding what your brain is up to helps you understand the actual problem, which is the most important part of solving it. When we really and truly understand a problem from all sides, we can resolve it. So know what your lower brain, your limbic system, is up to, and convince it that you're on the same side.
That's right- I'm telling you, which is (to oversimplify things) your pre-frontal cortex, to talk to another part of your own brain. These parts of your brain are intimately connected, and by using your PFC to communicate with your limbic system, you can directly affect it. You know that, in reality, your brain's freakout over doing X task is actually costing you energy rather than saving it, because it's inevitable that you're going to have to do the task, thus expending the energy, AND because it's wasting energy on freaking out. In other words, it's going about its goal the exact wrong way.
To go back to my icy showers, once I'd taken a few, the gross feeling of anxiety all but evaporated. Why? Because it was a waste- my brain knew it was going to happen, so it wasn't about to waste more energy on trying to get me to avoid it. It just wanted to save energy, and once it knew that that energy was a sunk cost, it stopped.
Where does that leave us? Well, it leaves us with Ulysses. If our limbic brains know that we're tied to the mast, they expend less energy on trying to get us to wreck the ship. That doesn't mean the anxiety will just disappear for the same reason. Those circuits in our brain that cause those feelings of anxiety, restlessness, and desire are well-worn paths, and so much less costly than trekking through new routes. The brain is going to try to get you to do things it's used to because they're efficient.
I want you to keep that in mind. When you want to keep doing an easy task, stop doing a hard task, or stray from your plans for a healthy meal/exercise/etc, it has nothing to do with your actual ability or energy. This is not about real abilities or real energy being drained or absent. It's about the perceived possibility of a future lack of energy. When the brain tells you that you're tired and need to sit around for a few hours and watch tv or do a low demand task before a high demand one, it has nothing to do with you actually being tired or unable to focus: those feelings of tiredness and unfocused, rather, are the results of your brain's overcaution. It's telling you that hey, you should feel unfocused and take a break because I'm terrified we might run out of energy.
This all assumes, of course, that you're getting a reasonable night's sleep each night so that your brain can clear waste from itself, and that you are, indeed, eating a reasonably healthy diet with adequate calories, and getting basic nutrients that your body needs. If you're not, then the brain is going to freak out even more because its reserves are lower. Diet, sleep, and exercise are massively important to let your brain know that you have the basics and it doesn't need to shut you into power-saving mode all the time in order to keep you alive.
So here's what you do: first, gain awareness of what your brain is doing and appreciate it for trying to keep you safe. Then, tie yourself to the mast. Let your brain know, whether by getting rid of the junk food in your house or by selling the tv or by setting up an amazing blocking app on your phone like StayFocused, that you are, in fact, going to do this thing and by fighting you with an anxiety tantrum, it's wasting precious resources.
Tell me one tiny step you can commit to taking to tie yourself to the mast below.
