RECOGNIZING MINDLESSNESS

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The polar opposite of mindfulness, mindlessness is a state of mind where you are largely unaware of what you’re thinking, feeling, and doing. It’s like being on a plane running on auto-pilot mode. The plane flies automatically, and for the most part the system works well, until the plane runs into trouble. The problem is the “running into trouble” part. When people run on auto-pilot, they create lots of opportunities for that trouble to take the form of excessive stress.

Auto-pilot: The good, the bad, and the really bad

Many times in your day, you’ll find that you too are running on auto-pilot. Recall those times when you were driving on the highway and realized that you hadn’t been paying the slightest bit of attention to the road or your driving but had instead been daydreaming about something else. Or all those mornings when you got dressed, washed up, and left your bedroom, paying almost no attention to what you were doing. (One day I showed up at my office wearing unmatched shoes.) You and I were running on auto-pilot. When you’re in auto-pilot mode, you’re at the mercy of unfocused attention, often subconscious, which takes your thoughts, feelings, and actions where they want to go, but not necessarily where you want them to go. You’re not mindful; you’re mindless.

The good

Not all auto-pilot behavior is bad. Imagine your day if you couldn’t remember how to do even the most routine tasks. Suppose you needed an instruction manual to guide you through your day. Getting dressed in the morning, preparing breakfast, figuring out how to get to work, driving your car — every routine would demand your full awareness and attention. “Put your socks on before your shoes.” “Push down on the gas pedal on your right and use the brake to the left if you have to stop.” It would be exhausting! Mindlessness, it appears, has its place in our lives. That’s the good part.

The bad

But here’s the bad part about running on auto-pilot. You can wind up spending most of your life on auto-pilot, missing out on wonderful aspects of life that make it so much more meaningful. I’m reminded of those many car trips with our kids and our constant unheeded nagging, such as “Wow, look at the color of those leaves!” or “Just look at that sunset!” Too much auto-pilot can restrict your experiences and your appreciation of the world around you. Your life can feel boring and routine. You get short-changed.

The really bad

Here’s the really bad part. When you’re on auto-pilot, your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors can become distorted and stress-producing. In auto-pilot mode, much of your inner experience can take the form of ruminating, over-thinking, exaggerating, fearfully anticipating, feeling anxious and upset, overreacting, and avoiding — to mention but a few of the stress-producing traps you can fall into. Stress thrives in a mindless environment.

Mindless multi-tasking

Multi-tasking may seem like an efficient way to get a lot accomplished. After all, you can write that history paper, text a friend, listen to music, and check out your favorite social-media site all at the same time. So, you may ask, what’s the problem? There are downsides. The person who drives on the highway and simultaneously figures out how to end his current relationship may be using his time incredibly efficiently, but he may not be attending to what is happening on the road. His attention is stretched far too thin, and when this happens he is running on auto-pilot. Multi-tasking increases your stress levels. You have too many balls in the air, with insufficient attention paid to any one ball.

The negative consequences abound. Your performance may suffer, and you may retain information poorly. People close to you may feel hurt and neglected, and you may feel overwhelmed. What might first seem like the perfect antidote to inefficiency may, in the final analysis, contribute to more inefficiency.

The dangers of mindless thinking

Our minds are a thought factory. Always busy, always active. Not only do we think all the time, we have feelings, and we act and react all the time. And though we have all these internal experiences, we often aren’t consciously aware of them. They’re just there. We can get locked into our automatic thoughts.

The relationship between our thoughts, feelings, and actions is a close one. To put it most simply, we feel the way we think. Feelings of stress are no exception. If we think in distorted, unrealistic ways, we wind up feeling much more stressed than we have to. Whenever we are in auto-pilot mode — unaware of what we are thinking, feeling, or doing — we are at the mercy of those automatic experiences. And often, that’s not good. The following sections explain why.

Your thoughts are not facts

Generally, it’s a good idea to listen to yourself. One of the advantages of being higher on the evolutionary scale is having the ability to think. Our thoughts allow us to make plans, solve problems, make decisions, and figure out how much to tip the waiter. Sometimes, though, it’s not a good idea to listen to yourself. Your thoughts can create unnecessary worry, anguish, upset, anger, resentment, guilt, and depression, to mention but a few distressing emotions.

Sometimes you give your thoughts and feelings too much power. A thought comes to mind, and you feel compelled to listen to that thought and automatically assume the thought is a valid one. You believe that your thoughts tell you the truth. Well, sometimes yes and sometimes no. Some examples:

“I’m a loser!”

“I can’t stand being in traffic!”

“I’ll never meet anybody!”

“Nobody likes me!”

“People should treat me fairly!”

“People are just out for themselves!”

While there may be a grain of truth in some of these statements, they are, for the most part, distortions or biased perceptions.

Your feelings aren’t facts, either

Many times when you feel a certain way, you believe “If I’m feeling this way (such as angry, upset, or anxious), I should listen to these emotions, believe what these feelings are telling me, and act on them.” So when Lucy’s friend shows up late for lunch, Lucy is angry and lets her friend know that she is angry — in no uncertain terms and in a very loud voice. The friend has an understandable reason for being late, but Lucy still feels quite angry. Her feelings of anger tell her that her feelings are the right feelings to have. She assumes that her feelings accurately reflect the appropriateness of her emotional response. She tunes into her feelings, believes them, and acts upon them.

Feelings come and go. So do the bodily sensations that can come with feelings. We can be in a bad mood, be angry, feel down, and still realize that at some point these feelings will pass. In some ways, it’s easier to accept our emotions as transient but not always trustworthy. We may not be able to escape the grip of the emotion, but often the wiser observer within us says, “Don’t trust this feeling!” If we let our thoughts and feelings take over, they can define us. They can lock us into a worldview that is narrow and restricted. Bodily sensations can have the same effect. Tightness in the chest, rapid breathing, heart palpitations, lumps in the throat, and other bodily sensations can be mistaken as valid reflections of the importance and validity of the situations and events we encounter.

Your “fused” thinking

Whenever you believe that your thoughts and feelings are “the truth,” you give them an enormous amount of power. You can get stuck in your world of thoughts and feelings and have trouble getting out. You can become fused with your thoughts and feelings. You have no psychological distance. You are too close to your inner experiences, and you let them run the show. Because you’re on auto-pilot, you’re not aware of what you’re thinking or feeling. You truly believe that all of your thinking and feeling is sensible and should be listened to. The following example gives you a taste of what fused thinking feels like.

Imagine you’re in a theater watching a movie. The movie starts out pretty well, with lots of action, good acting, and an interesting plot. You’re glued to the screen. The guy next to you could be carving a pumpkin, but you wouldn’t notice. You and the movie are fused. After about an hour, you realize that the story has run out of gas. The love affair between the two main characters just doesn’t work for you. And ten shots with a six-shooter? Give me a break! You mentally step back, and rather than being fused with the movie, you’re now thinking about the movie. You’ve shifted your attention. You’re aware of the movie as something “out there.” You’ve detached, and you’re a step closer to becoming more mindful.

Copyright © Allen Elkin Phd – Originally appeared in Stress Management for Dummies 2^nd edition by Allen Elkin