Your Brain is a Liar

Your brain is probably lying to you One of the things that happens when we start down the path of buffering is that our brains will tell us things that are not true. It will try subtle phrases that it knows have worked in the past and that have taken you down the path of your buffer before. It does this because a little lie is ok most of the time and especially if it is said to make someone feel ok. You know what I mean if you’ve ever told your spouse that you loved her in that dress when you really hated it. Little white lies are actually pretty normal, simple stories that we all use to grease the wheels of social interaction. You wouldn’t tell your boss that you absolutely can’t stand being in meetins with him because he never shuts up. So when he asks, “do you think we got the message across?” rather than saying, ‘yeah, you repeated yourself about 8 times” you say, “I’m certain the team knows what you were trying to convey.” We also do this with our kids, we indulge them with stories that, while not strictly true, help us and help them navigate the world around us. The easter bunny and santa claus are examples of this, but also when we are encouraging our children to accomplish something they’ve never done before we tell them, “I know you can do it” when you know no such thing, but you simply think it will help them try. what we say to others, while not about being deceitful, can often be construed as not quite truthful when put under strict scrutiny. Our brains use this same capacity to keep our external interactions running smoothly on our internal dialogue as well. The phrase my brain used to tell me “This is the last time” I remember distinctly being upstairs in our Chugiak Alaska home as a kid, tucked away in the cubby under my parents water bed. It was always warm in there and since we lived in Alaska, it was a great place to hang out, read a book and be alone. By that point in my life I had been taught that masturbation was to be avoided so there I was, warm and cozy and wrestling with the hormones of a pubescent boy. I told myself, “this will be the last time and then I’ll never do it again.” It made my decision to masturbate easier. It was a final farewell. It made it so that immediately afterward I felt good about myself. I felt like I was going to follow through with that promise I made to myself. We do this with food too. “I’ll start my diet on Monday.” You’ve already not followed your diet today, it’s ok if you don’t follow it the rest of the day. These are some of the things it says to help us feel better when we are not doing the things that we said we would. These are the little white lies that grease the wheels of feeling uncomfortable. The simple thoughts that, when you examine them closely, often turn out to be only partially or completely untrue. Our brain lies because it wants us to feel good. It wants us to know that we are going to be ok, that we are safe, that we will survive. When we choose to believe these stories our brain tells us we get immediate relief from the discomfort that we are feeling by saying yes to a buffer that we may not really want in our lives. For instance, it’s the holidays, I have a bag of white chocolate mint pretzels in the house. I also have been working on not eating mindlessly and eating healthily. When I see those pretzels my brain will tell me, “it’s not that bad, you’ll just have one.” I grab one and chomp it down. Then, to keep me from feeling the discomfort of having to stop eating them and the discomfort that will come because I now have eaten something that wasn’t really going to help me reach my goals my brain will offer me