Drivers welcome: part ii "Pumping the brakes, Slowing emotions"

In the previous article Drivers Welcome: Part I  I discussed how a person’s mind can be loosely compared to the driver of an automobile.  The driver of the vehicle is similar to the mind a person utilizes to maneuver their own body through time and space, through the ultimately ever-changing environments of their life.  Just as a car has a gas pedal and a brake so should a person be able to slow or increase the speed or control of their thoughts, which would be the road(s).  Please do see this previous article for a better foundation regarding the metaphor.

How to develop a better ability to control and navigate your inner world and how you relate to your outer world is a key component in therapy.  What mechanisms can be put in place to begin better controlling your emotions and thoughts?  Well the mind is a very complicated and curious place but there are a few basics that can be generalized to almost, if not, all people. 

Imagery, Auditory and Kinesthesia (or Feelings) could be one way to simplify without creating too much complication or dampening the awesome complexity of being a person.  Nearly all individuals engage these three sensory activities.  Of course there are people who are incapable of sensing one or more of these modes of being the important factor is their informational and communicational aspects—All people communicate and process information.  These three forms of sensing communicate information to the person and this information is translated by the individual's mind.

A person may be thinking or driving down the metaphorical road of thought while utilizing imagery by making pictures to themselves, auditory by listening to sounds the create or feelings by sensing physical feelings they can actually feel.  People will utilize one, two or all three of these modes.  One of the problems will be that they will more often not be aware that they are traveling through their thoughts this way and then the brakes and gas pedals are being depressed or disengaged without their knowledge or choice, aka their control.   The “gas” can be quite simply compared to a person’s emotions, but emotions are quite simply one of the most difficult parts of the human car to control.

The images you picture, the sounds you hear and the feelings you feel are all part of the way you experience yourself and make up the road you travel down.  The major differentiating dimension from the metaphor of the driver/car and the mind/brain is that with the latter there is also the internal road or world that we travel.  This internal world can be as, or more difficult to travel, and as we have headlights on our cars and the sun to help us navigate the external world, what do we have to assist us with the navigation of our internal world?

The “headlights” or “sun” of the external world is comparable to our awareness, which we can direct inward to illuminate and cast light on our internal problems.  Therapy can assist in directing that light so it can illuminate parts of our minds that we were unable to illuminate ourselves because we were too closely and intimately connected.  Or possibly we were to emotionally connected to the pain that keeps us at a distance from the problem so therapy can be a way of us getting comfortable with the topics and then comfortable talking about the pain, thereby illuminating and dispelling it.


By Mathew Quaschnick

---