Thoughts, beliefs and learned behaviours

Our thoughts shape how we experience our lives. They influence how we see ourselves, how we understand other people and how we respond to the world around us. They occupy our waking hours and can follow us into our dreams. Our minds and thoughts are always active; we have no respite from them.

Yet how much do we understand them? Where do they come from? What meaning do they carry for us, and how much of that meaning do we recognise?

How can we hold beliefs that contradict one another, or behave in ways that conflict with what we believe? And if we began to challenge the assumptions we take for granted, how stable would our understanding of ourselves and the world remain?

Sometimes in our lives, we have to explain how we see the world. We are questioned about the way we act and think. Yet it appears that most people do not know where their thoughts come from or how those thoughts shape their experience of reality.

It would be expedient to ask ourselves a simple question, what type of person am I?

Ask yourself now, what jumps to mind?

Some people might say, “If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.”

Others might say, “I’m the type of person who always lands on my feet.”

Others might answer, “No matter what I do, it always turns out badly.” Or simply, “I always mess up.”

The question is, how do these framings shape our reality? Is it that thoughts shape our reality, or that reality shapes our thoughts?

Which highlights another question; what are reality and thought?

Reality can appear obvious to the conscious mind. This is what happened. This is how things are. This is who I am.

But what is a thought? We use the word easily, with an intuitive sense of what we mean. That idea that “popped” into our head.

Yet when we stop to consider what a thought actually is, something so familiar becomes surprisingly difficult to explain. Where did that thought come from? Did you deliberately think it, or did you become aware of it once it was already there? Is it unique to you or someone else’s idea?

Let’s examine what a thought is and where it comes from.

A thought is the output of a bunch of connections within the mind that fire habitually, or in a learnt way, to give an outcome. Evolutionarily speaking, these learnt behaviours and “thinking” were to enable shortcuts, to lower the cost of thought, so that quicker action could be taken to speed up a task or prevent danger. This has been adapted over time to include traditions, political ideologies, favourite football teams, and much more. But it all stems from an evolutionary lens. Repeat behaviour in order to survive, avoid injury, gather food or avoid being expelled from the group, which would once have led to certain death.

We are all products of our genetics and environment, nature and nurture per se.  While we don’t have any control over this as we develop, it certainly shapes the way we operate and see the world. That is to say, the patterns we emulate are present within the environment we inhabit, and we copy them. These patterns become the base assumptions and beliefs foundational to us and upon which the story of "ME" is built. If there is a weakness in the foundation, then the building will wobble when pressed.

To help us understand "thoughts", I’d like to introduce a metaphor of glasses with a red coloured lens.  As we put on the glasses, we notice that the whole world becomes a shade of red. There is enough light being let through the lenses that we can function normally and to us, and everyone else wearing the glasses our perception is normal. However, every now and then, we may bump into something that the lens obscures.

The problem with the red lens

In front of the white building stands a red pole. People wearing red glasses struggle to see it because their lenses make it nearly invisible against the white building. But a sore head is a powerful teacher. Over time, they learn to avoid it, guided by the memory of the collision rather than a clear view of what’s in front of them.

The metaphor is that the red glasses represent our childhood, our environment and our nature. We are all wearing one version of the red glasses, some more than one pair, and we just don’t know it. When we bump into things, we assume that it was the other person’s fault. They did something to me etc. While this may be true, it could also be that your glasses have changed what you’ve seen. You just couldn’t see what the person with no glasses saw as obvious and ran headlong into the pole and blamed the house, as that’s all you could see.

You don't see the pole in front of the house and the result hurts, a sore head. You don’t understand that the pole is there or that the lenses you wear are causing it to be invisible. You remember that the danger is present, and learn to avoid it. When outside another similar looking house, you avoid the same spot and when nothing happenes you assume that avoiding that same spot kept you safe, not knowing the pole was never there. You assume that this learned behaviour has saved you from the pain. Later when encountering another simular looking house with a different red pole location you run into it. Obviously the placement of the red poles is not dependant on the white houses. Soon enough you have a belief that white houses are bad, as the pain is real, and avoid them, not knowing the true reason why. 

The pesky lenses we wear, we didn’t ask to wear them, they were placed on us before we had a choice. Those white houses and red poles are everywhere. Our strategy works and we grow up thinking white houses are painful, we pass that knowledge on, why wouldn't we, the houses are painful after all. Thereby installing the red glasses all over again.

So how can we apply this in the real world?

When we start making blanket statements that “all white houses are dangerous”, we should become aware that we have a set of red lens glasses on. 

Let’s be honest: when we say something like “all white houses are dangerous”, can we really say it is true in every case, without exception?

Or to put it another way, instead of saying, X happened, we say X always happens. That’s the lens, the always bit. People cannot be trusted, people always leave, I always mess up etc. These are lenses that we have been given.

When we hear these words, always, never, all, etc, it should give us a reason to pause and examine our lenses. Are we responding to what is happening here, or carrying an expectation formed somewhere else?

The same is true when emotions are disproportionate, to the event that precipitated them. Say you’re angry, very angry maybe. When you feel that anger, does it remind you of another time you were angry?

When you cry does that remind you of another time you were crying?

If so, there is a good chance youre wearing a red coloured emotional lens too.

Whats important here, is that the pain is REAL, its that the lens is making it redder (more painful) than it should be.

These examples are a good clue to identify that a lens is active.

Okay so you see there's a lens, now what?

That thing that it reminded you of, that needs “work” as we say in the trade. We need to “take that memory out” and “look at it”. We need to find the event or events that is linked to it and unpack what happened to see what emotions are attached.

Often by noticing that the lenses are present and then becoming familiar with the “pole” that injured us so often, we see the pole for what it is. The pole is not connected to the white house; white houses often have nothing to do with it. The pole is a life event, a memory, a traumatic incident, a betrayal or any other things that stay with us. 

By learning what the pole is, what shape it is and how it hurt us, we can learn to trust the house again. The assumptions and beliefs that we hold about the house can start to fade. Slowly at first, as we have to learn to trust ourselves not to hit a pole, but the lens is not as red now, so it’s easier to see the pole. It's still red and painful, but now we can see it. We don't have to run into it as much, if at all.

 

Markus, H. (1977). Self-schemata and processing information about the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35(2), 63–78.
Two experiments examining how beliefs about ourselves influence processing of self-relevant information. Particularly relevant to your “story of ME” and lenses. researchgate.net

Vervliet, B., Kindt, M., Vansteenwegen, D., & Hermans, D. (2010). Fear generalization in humans: Impact of prior non-fearful experiences. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 48(11), 1078–1084.
A laboratory experiment examining fear spreading to a similar stimulus, and how prior safe experience can reduce that spread. Relevant to one dangerous house becoming “white houses are dangerous”. PubMed

Lovibond, P. F., Mitchell, C. J., Minard, E., Brady, A., & Menzies, R. G. (2009). Safety behaviours preserve threat beliefs: Protection from extinction of human fear conditioning by an avoidance response. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 47(8), 716–720.
The closest match to your second-house example. In this experiment, an avoidance response helped preserve an expectation of danger after the threat stopped. PubMed

Hardwick, R. M., Forrence, A. D., Krakauer, J. W., & Haith, A. M. (2019). Time-dependent competition between goal-directed and habitual response preparation. Nature Human Behaviour, 3, 1252–1262.
Experimental evidence concerning rapidly prepared habitual responses and their competition with goal-directed responses. Useful for your discussion of learned patterns. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Ehlers, A., & Clark, D. M. (2000). A cognitive model of posttraumatic stress disorder. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 38(4), 319–345.
A theoretical model connecting trauma memories, interpretations and coping strategies with persistent threat. Relevant to the memory section, with the important limitation that it concerns PTSD specifically.