I have read in a few different places this simple ‘story’ to illustrate a key difference between our brains and a zebras! Or a goat or a sheep for that matter……. A zebra might be calmly eating some grass when it hears a rustle in the grass. Whether that rustle is caused by real danger (a lion) or not (the wind), the zebra gets out of there as the fear response is not a finely tuned one and acts very much on a ‘better safe than sorry’ principle. Assuming the zebra survives and finds itself a little while later in a place where the grass is not rustling, it very quickly resumes grazing and gets on with its day.
Compare this with humans! If we were walking down an alleyway and heard ominous footsteps coming up quickly behind us, like the zebra, whether the danger was real (a person running towards us to mug us) or not (someone in a rush), our body would mostly like react with a strong urge to start running (we might not actually run, but that’s another whole blog post about social expectations and needing to fit in). But here’s where we differ from the zebra. We are likely to remain rattled for a while.
Why is this?
Well it’s because our brains evolved something a zebra’s didn’t and that includes our ability to plan and imagine! So after our walk down that alleyway, we might remain a little cautious, we might want to rush to safety or we might in the worst case scenario, avoid alleyways altogether from that point on. It’s great that our higher level thinking enables us to do so much more than a zebra, but the downside is that our thinking gives us the ability to dwell on the past and anticipate the future and quite often both can be done in a way that triggers uncomfortable emotions – especially if we’re prone to anxiety. We can imagine what could have happened and what might happen next time we walk down an alleyway so that we plan not to do it again.
So basically our higher level thinking enables rumination (dwelling on the same unsettling thought over and over) and catastrophising (imagining that everything that could go wrong, will go wrong). There’s a lot I would put in a dossier labelled: the pesky mind and its tricks.
It’s no surprise therefore that the practices that can bring us in the moment – like meditation, mindfulness, losing ourselves in creative flow – can be soothing. Engaging in such practices can override the tendency to ruminate and catastrophise as we become increasingly tuned into this moment. But I can also see why it’s not overly common practice, because it does not bring about immediate relief – it takes practice. It was two years of meditating before I actually felt the effect but I would still say – it was worth it!