Planting Flowers

“In the Garden of the Mind …

Be with what is there; Decrease the Negative; Increase the Positive. Witness. Pull Weeds. Plant Flowers. Let Be. Let Go. Let In. Recognizing. Releasing. Resourcing.”
Dr. Rick Hanson

During times of deep uncertainty, environmental and internal stress produces CUTS: Chronic Unpredictable Toxic Stress (CUTS). Incoming challenges/threats from CUTS often trigger our much younger defensive behaviors (sleep/eating issues, separation challenges, anti-dependence/co-dependence, checking out/escaping into fantasy, binging on food/screens, doom-scrolling). These reactive behaviors become a default response to overwhelming stress. A poorly regulated autonomic nervous system that typically over/under responds to perceived threats is often the result.

One of the ways we can build resilience is to grow our internal resources, i.e., “plant more flowers”. According to Dr. Rick Hanson, bestselling author and neuropsychologist, humans have three core needs: safety, satisfaction, and connection. These needs are powerful drivers of human behavior: the need to avoid harm, to approach rewards, and to attach to others.

These three needs roughly correspond to three different parts of the brain:

• avoiding harm correlates to the brain stem: safety & survival needs
• approaching rewards corresponds to our limbic mid brain, contentment & motivation needs
• attaching to others correlates to our prefrontal cortex: giving/receiving care & compassion within our relationships with others

There is a critical consideration for increasing resilience: transforming the brain’s hard-wired negativity bias. Hanson explains “…the brain evolved to look for bad news, overreact to it, and fast-track negative experiences into emotional memory. In effect, your brain is like Velcro for the negative but Teflon for the positive”.

The negativity bias decreases adaptability. Our human brains can over-focus on the negative while disregarding evidence that we are worthy, that we are good, that we are on the right track, that we are ok. This is one of the primary underlying mechanisms of self-abandonment. This self-abandonment can happen many times a day as the negativity bias is amplified throughout our perceptions: it colors what we take in and how we respond to the social and emotional environment. It reinforces a negative feedback loop of reactivity instead of responsiveness: triggering fight, flight, freeze and fawn trauma response behaviors.

In Hanson’s best-seller “Hardwiring Happiness” (2013) he offers a path for “Self-Directed Positive Neuroplasticity” called Taking in the Good, or TG. TG is based on sound learning theory: inner resources are mostly “acquired through emotional, somatic, social, and motivational learning. It isn’t enough to just have good experiences; we also must install them in order for change or learning to occur.”

According to Hanson, the more we can expand and absorb the good we get from any good experience, the more we grow our inner resources. TG offers a simple corrective to the over focusing on problems that takes up most of our mental real estate. It is building a habit of looking for and reinforcing the good by intentionally having a good experience (several times throughout each day), enriching or intensifying the good experience, and absorbing or installing the good experience.

TG is eminently simple. There are 3 steps in order to change the negativity bias, these steps need to be done on a daily basis, each practice taking approx. 1 to 1.5 minutes, so roughly 6-9 minutes a day. Every time this sequence is practiced (Have Good, Enrich Good, Absorb Good) those neural pathways become more hardwired. The fundamental principle of neuroplasticity is “neurons that fire together wire together”. Short daily practice every day is best for neuroplastic change.

With practice, TG can turn the negativity bias into a positivity bias, whereby our brains have become trained to look for, expand on, and absorb the good. When we are able to do that regularly, we have built a resilient brain for the modern world.

There are 3 steps to TG. Practice 4 -6 times a day—each time taking a minute or so:

1. Have a good experience: Create or remember the good—initially it may be easier to remember a good moment than to create one. Creating good can be as simple as holding something beautiful. It could be a good fact “my flowers are blooming” or “finally, it’s raining’ or a small victory “I cleaned out my fridge!”
2. Enrich the feeling of good, stay with it for at least ‘6 breaths’ before moving on. Feel it in your head and heart, feel it growing and expanding, surrender to the feeling. The idea is to allow the good to enrich long enough to move the experience from short term memory into long term neural structures. If the experience is too fleeting, it won’t lead to neuroplastic change.
3. Absorb this feeling by imagining your good flowing into you and becoming part of you…This step requires imagination—absorbing good like the warm golden rays of the sun

Examples of a good experience:

Explore Dr. Hanson’s videos on TG:
https://youtu.be/1LDDzhDIqcM
https://youtu.be/dUTHfl60Liw
https://www.rickhanson.net/ted-x-marin/

References

• Hanson, R. (2013). Hardwiring happiness: The new brain science of contentment, calm, and confidence.

• Hanson, R., & Hanson, F. (2018). Resilient: How to grow an unshakable core of calm, strength, and happiness.

• Website: www.rickhanson.net