There Must be Some way out of Here

Becom­ing Aware of Your Men­tal Frame­works to Improve Deci­sion-Mak­ing

Damásio’s The­o­ry of Somat­ic Mark­ers — Part II

In Part One, we explored the emo­tion­al side of deci­sion-mak­ing and the the­o­ry of somat­ic mark­ers. In sum­ma­ry, Damá­sio’s hypoth­e­sis illus­trates how deci­sion-mak­ing is guid­ed by asso­cia­tive learn­ing. Dur­ing the for­ma­tion of these mark­ers, your brain builds schemat­ic images and pro­to­types of sit­u­a­tions, link­ing emo­tions, per­cep­tions, cog­ni­tion, and phys­i­o­log­i­cal reac­tions. To put it sim­ply, it’s like stor­ing all rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion of past expe­ri­ences on “index cards” in inter­nal “draw­ers” of your brain (e.g., a black dog that bit you, a park, the sounds you heard, your fear, and a fast heart­beat) with a spe­cif­ic label (e.g., big, black bark­ing dog in a park is bad). By link­ing past expe­ri­ences to bod­i­ly sig­nals and emo­tions, your brain cre­ates somat­ic mark­ers. If you encounter a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion (a park, a black dog that barks) your brain will com­pare and say: “We have to act fast! Cre­ate fear and a fast heart­beat!” So, fear and the heart­beat serve as somat­ic mark­ers which enable you to react before think­ing about it. These mark­ers are designed to help sim­pli­fy choic­es by reduc­ing cog­ni­tive load and there­by enabling quick­er deci­sion-mak­ing. This can be espe­cial­ly help­ful in dan­ger­ous, com­plex or uncer­tain sit­u­a­tions. How­ev­er, like most bio­log­i­cal mech­a­nisms, it also has its dis­ad­van­tages. Some­times, you may cre­ate sen­so­ry images and somat­ic mark­ers in sit­u­a­tions that did not turn out well. In these cas­es, the mark­ers may pre­vent you from mak­ing ratio­nal, pro­duc­tive deci­sions, leav­ing you unable to act in ways that pro­mote growth and well-being [3].

What is meant to aid you in high­ly dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions can hin­der you from achiev­ing the best results in oth­er sce­nar­ios. Imag­ine sit­u­a­tions that demand deci­sions cru­cial for your career or per­son­al devel­op­ment; for instance, decid­ing whether to give a pub­lic speech or to take on a major project. These moments call for deci­sions that allow you to improve and grow. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, cues in these sit­u­a­tions might trig­ger unhelp­ful somat­ic mark­ers from past expe­ri­ences. The good news is that just as sen­so­ry images and somat­ic mark­ers form through repeat­ed expe­ri­ences, they can also be reshaped by con­scious­ly mod­i­fy­ing how sit­u­a­tions are inter­pret­ed and expe­ri­enced. It takes time, effort and con­scious aware­ness, but wouldn’t it be great to replace coun­ter­pro­duc­tive or harm­ful con­tents in your “draw­er” with more con­struc­tive somat­ic mark­ers? There is a way out of this [2].

Acknowl­edg­ing What is in Your “Draw­ers”

Think about sit­u­a­tions that seem par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult for you. Let’s assume that you are asked to give a pub­lic speech. Before let­ting fear, sweaty hands, and a rac­ing heart­beat dic­tate your decision…let’s pause and reflect! If you want to change your sen­so­ry images and reac­tions to such sit­u­a­tions, you need to under­stand what you are deal­ing with. Step one is becom­ing con­scious of what nor­mal­ly guides your deci­sions in these sce­nar­ios. When you think about the spe­cif­ic sit­u­a­tion (e.g. giv­ing a speech), a reac­ti­va­tion of sen­so­ry images and somat­ic mark­ers can be car­ried out in two ways:

1. The “Body-Loop”: You direct­ly expe­ri­ence bod­i­ly sen­sa­tions and emo­tions in response to the thought or sit­u­a­tion.
2. The “As-If-Body-Loop”: Your brain sim­u­lates emo­tion­al and phys­i­o­log­i­cal states as if you were expe­ri­enc­ing the sit­u­a­tion, allow­ing you to think ahead while con­serv­ing ener­gy. This mech­a­nism can hap­pen uncon­scious­ly or con­scious­ly and is a pow­er­ful tool for under­stand­ing what’s stored in your “draw­er” labeled “pub­lic speech­es.

Step 1: Eval­u­a­tion of Your “Index Cards” and Reflec­tion on Relat­ed Somat­ic Mark­ers

Take inven­to­ry of the sit­u­a­tion you’re cur­rent­ly fac­ing (e.g., decid­ing whether to give a speech).  Think of this process as sort­ing through your men­tal “draw­ers.” From time to time, it’s essen­tial to review what you’ve stored and decide if some con­tents should be updat­ed or dis­card­ed. The gen­er­al sug­ges­tion to be aware of your­self, your sit­u­a­tion and your reac­tions is the first step to gain a deep­er under­stand­ing of where you are and where you came from. Most of the time we have stored mem­o­ries of past sit­u­a­tions and their relat­ed com­po­nents in our mind, but those images are very blur­ry, as we are not con­scious of them. Psy­chi­a­trist and author Carl Gus­tav Jung once said: “The psy­cho­log­i­cal rules says that when an inner sit­u­a­tion is not made con­scious, it hap­pens out­side, as fate!” [5]. In this sense it will help you to under­stand and to be aware of what guides you.

There are sev­er­al tech­niques you can use to assess what Dama­sio calls a “pre­vi­ous­ly learned fac­tu­al-emo­tion­al set.” You can apply these meth­ods indi­vid­u­al­ly or in com­bi­na­tion [4].

Thought Jour­nal­ing: Visu­al­ize your­self giv­ing a speech. Imag­ine the audi­ence the set­ting, and the atmos­phere. Write down what comes to mind. This can help you iden­ti­fy thoughts and beliefs, emo­tions, phys­i­o­log­i­cal reac­tions and cues which trig­ger the neg­a­tive somat­ic reac­tion. For exam­ple: You might notice thoughts like, “I’m going to embar­rass myself,” accom­pa­nied by sweaty palms and a rac­ing heart­beat. It might be trig­gered by cer­tain cues (e.g. a crowd­ed room). Jour­nal­ing helps uncov­er these thoughts and sen­so­ry cues trig­ger­ing unhelp­ful somat­ic mark­ers. Often, this process reveals that some of these stored images are unnec­es­sary or even absurd, allow­ing you to begin reshap­ing them. And there­fore, improve your deci­sion-mak­ing skill.

ABC Mod­el: This is a tech­nique devel­oped by psy­chother­a­pist Albert Ellis to gain aware­ness of pre­vi­ous sit­u­a­tions and the way you stored them in your mem­o­ry. It is sim­i­lar to jour­nal­ing but with a spe­cif­ic approach. Ana­lyze a sit­u­a­tion by break­ing it into Antecedent (what hap­pened in pre­vi­ous sit­u­a­tions), Beliefs (your inter­pre­ta­tion), and Conse­quences (emo­tion­al and behav­ioral respons­es). For Exam­ple: An antecedent might be a failed pre­sen­ta­tion. Your belief might be, “I’m a ter­ri­ble speak­er,” and the conse­quence might be fear and an unhealthy stress reac­tion. There are good chances you will avoid sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions. The first step is to acknowl­edge it and then take notes. It will be the basis for change [1].

Body Scan: Envi­sion your­self giv­ing a speech. Focus your atten­tion on dif­fer­ent parts of your body, notic­ing sen­sa­tions, ten­sion, or relax­ation. Notice your heart­beat, your breath­ing pat­terns or if your hands are get­ting sweaty. Write it down! This tech­nique builds aware­ness of phys­i­o­log­i­cal states tied to somat­ic mark­ers, help­ing you pin­point areas of ten­sion that may need address­ing.

Mind­ful Aware­ness: Imag­ine the speech sce­nario and focus on the emo­tion it evokes. Note any feel­ings that arise, even sub­tle or ambigu­ous ones. Mind­ful­ness allows you to observe your emo­tion­al reac­tions with­out judg­ment, help­ing you bet­ter under­stand the emo­tion­al con­tent of your somat­ic mark­ers.

By now, you should have a clear­er col­lec­tion of thoughts, beliefs, cues, emo­tions, and phys­i­o­log­i­cal respons­es. This gives you a detailed blue­print of what hap­pens when you encounter a sit­u­a­tion (real or imag­ined) where you must decide whether to give a speech. Based on this col­lec­tion, your ini­tial reac­tion might be to avoid the speech entire­ly. But with aware­ness and the tech­niques out­lined here, you can begin address­ing the chal­lenges and rewrit­ing your somat­ic mark­ers to enable health­i­er, more pro­duc­tive deci­sions. In the next part of this arti­cle series, we will explore how to active­ly reshape these mark­ers and build con­struc­tive pat­terns to sup­port your growth.

Ref­er­ences

[1] Ellis, A. (1991). The revised ABC’s of ratio­nal-emo­tive ther­a­py (RET). Jour­nal of Ratio­nal-Emo­tive & Cog­ni­tive-Behav­ior Ther­a­py, 9(3), 139–172.

[2] Bob Dylan. (1967). All Along the Watch­tow­er. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jff6pZJvrWk

[3] Dama­sio, A. R. (1994). Descartes’ Error: Emo­tion, Rea­son, and the Human Brain. New York: Avon Books.

[4] Dama­sio A. R. (1996). The somat­ic mark­er hypoth­e­sis and the pos­si­ble func­tions of the pre­frontal cor­tex. Philo­soph­i­cal trans­ac­tions of the Roy­al Soci­ety of Lon­don. Series B, Bio­log­i­cal sci­ences, 351(1346), 1413–1420. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.1996.0125

[5] Jung, C. G. 1. (1979). Aion: research­es into the phe­nom­e­nol­o­gy of the self. 1^st Princeton/Bollingen paper­back print. Prince­ton, N.J., Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty Press.