The world tilts up

The world tilts down

The world spins, taking me with it

and how could I ever think I could make everything still

even for a minute

When the clock keeps ticking

*Our body chemistry controls so much of what and how we think.

I was reminded of this last night, when I couldn’t sleep and seemed saturated with negative thoughts.

As is my habit when beset by overthinking, I came out to download a bit of the congestion to paper. As I wrote, I noticed how much my mind was returning to the same buttons. Like a programme default mode using guilt, anxiety and foreboding as the buttons to bring me down.

I recalled a podcast I heard last year (and don’t hold me to this because the information is now sketchy thanks to my propensity for forgetting all sorts of facts that would be useful and overlaying them with lyrics from 80’s songs which definitely are not)

It was the Huberman Lab. Andrew Huberman was talking about how it is not just the body that prefers to return to homeostasis but also the brain. Or rather the chemistry of the brain. If we have been on a bit of a dopamine high, the brain will reduce this chemical back to normal levels. I can’t recall exactly how he said the brain does that and it is worth looking into, and I will. But it made sense to me that this is exactly what my brain was doing last night.

I have been on a happy, achieving goals, sort of dopamine high quite a lot this week. Perhaps my neuro chemistry needed to bring me back to earth.

Emotions are things that we can and should work with. They are the result of thoughts, thoughts that may or may not be also the result of chemical reactions. There is creative space around theories such as this. Space that we can step into, take a seat and analyse our thought processes, rather than being the victim of them.

We are thinking, feeling beings. It is extremely easy to fall under the spell of our thoughts, the feelings that those thoughts produce, the reactions that those feelings then set off in our body. It is also quite simple, once you fall into the habit, to begin to dismantle some of that pure reaction and begin to understand, or try to, what is happening.

It sure beats being pulled around randomly by the energies and processes of the body and mind. Step off the see saw.

Dopamine is fun. But serenity is a far more reliable friend. I was grateful to return to a feeling of equilibrium after a bit of quiet time and writing.

As I once wrote in a post somewhere back there – I believe our systems are like batteries, and we need both positive and negative charges to run. Both energies have their purpose in our lives. We all wish for happiness but the dark times have taught me so much how could I not appreciate both the light and the dark?

But all of that aside; it’s Friday! At least it is here in Oz – and a weekend of hot summer (sizzling, apparently supposed to get to 42), think I will be in the aircon working on some writing by lunchtime) whatever your plans and weather – it’s hard to hate a week-end. Enjoy.

Header photo thanks to Annie Spratf Unsplash 🌅