Hesitation

Hesitation is the enemy of change, and thus, the enemy of growth. A funny thing though really, do you think all creatures ponder their thoughts to the extent that they may consciously stop their own actions? Hesitation after all is not necessarily akin to fear. Although fruit of the same weedy tree, spawning out dendritically in our brains, it's not necessarily agreeable that hesitation occurs the same way that fight, flight, or freeze may.

There is much philosophy surrounding hesitation as a subset of fear. My favourite example is that from the behaviourists. Albert Bandura coined Social Learning Theory, paving the way for a mechanism that is still contemporarily relatable. That is, around experience. The argument being that every experience is made up of many smaller experiences, and the smaller down you break each, the closer you get to some micro examples that are strikingly familiar to you, having happened the same as before. In this way, the phenomenon of Déjà vu is felt, ordinarily when those micro experiences clump together in such strength that it's virtually impossible for your brain to tell the difference to what's happened before. You can't quite place it when the variation still exists, and yet you stop yourself, do a double take, and squint ever so slightly as if to check what you'd perceived and see if you'd imagined it. Chances are you haven't actually, it's just your hippocampus playing tricks. See, this part of our brain is far smaller than our prefrontal cortex, and whilst some individuals have vastly superior working and long-term memories, most of us see this fail far more than we'd like, and entirely more than we'd like to admit most of the time. Especially if it's finding the keys, phone, etc. And admitting defeat to your partner as you run late to a social do.

Here I'd like to take a moment to point out something that I have learnt from renowned, and somewhat embattled psychologist, Prof. Jordan Peterson:

"When experiencing anxiety, simply lean forward. Go for a walk, move about where you can, adjust your posture and lean into your fear. If you feel hesitation creeping in, fear may be your warning, so lean into it. It's neurologically impossible to think and be fearful at the same time."

Looking into this further, I've reflected more on my own studies around cognition, memory, and neurological function, and remembered just how close the amygdala (fear centre) is to the hippocampus (memory), and just how influential they are on one another, whilst both being a great distance from our thinking brain (prefrontal cortex). Although I would not posture at any point here that you take my whimsical explanations factually per se, I do suggest you give these basic tips a go, they're quite miraculous. Especially if you're predisposed to anxiety in some sense.

To add to this, I'd like to say that if you have the time, you should check out Jordan's lectures on YouTube. Not his social commentary or viral clips of him destroying leftists unless you want to venture down that crazy rabbit hole. Seriously though, invest in his lectures on psychology, and you'll find his teaching quite enjoyable. It's no wonder for me that he's become quite the famous intellectual given his orator skills.

If you're on a bandwagon of self-growth, you should check out Professor Andrew Huberman, who in my opinion, is quite the sensitive and humble expert. The way he engages in science is quite unique for someone so influential at the same time. He doesn't dabble in thought, or try to convince people if anything, even over correcting himself very often when he says even something akin to an opinion. He's as pragmatic as they come, and yet his real-world breakdown of relatable science around stress, performance, anxiety, etc. Is refreshing.

Back to hesitation, and the divergence from fear is was explaining. If fear is the innate feeling, or emotional response, hesitation is the conscious thinking that steps in. Mulling things over, can at times, turn into minutes, days, months, years, and regrets. Hesitation is bad when it stops you from doing something you'd wished you did, prevents you from seizing an opportunity that passes you by, or ceases you from achieving what you know you can. Hesitation is good when it's precognitive, or lets you stop yourself from doing something you really shouldn’t or keeps you from getting hurt. We've all seen those viral videos of people narrowly missing an out of control bus or similar because they'd ducked at precisely the right moment. Miraculous it can be, and emergent research into pre-cognition is sound, although lacking in its vigour and understanding so far.

My personal take on hesitation given my training and expertise, is around elimination of dissonance.

"Cognitive dissonance theory postulates that an underlying psychological tension is created when an individual’s behaviour is inconsistent with his or her thoughts and beliefs (Science Direct, 2012)." https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/cognitive-dissonance-theory

I believe very strongly that we owe it to ourselves, to go about as many interactions as we can, to eliminate the chance for dissonance to take hold. This internal integrity is key to coping, and the social work practitioners I've worked with vastly more experience than myself, or other experts in human fields, cope way better through adversity, when their dissonance is minimal. This means that we resolve our internal distaste of sex offenders if we're going to try and help them, that we don't promote leaving a violent relationship when our own partner doesn't listen to a thing we say, or if we vehemently advocate for climate change action whilst consuming avocados, palm oil, and cobalt without a seconds thought. If we don't force ourselves to think, then how can we be thoughtful? The more thought we give things, the more we may be able to stray from the pervasive clutches of dissonance, and toward a felt, and possibly very real self-actualization.

Mediation is key too. For those closest to me, the utterance of the word meditation, would be certainly met with disbelief and a raised eyebrow that won't come down for some time! I don't say it lightly, but until I'd recently read a book by Sam Harris, "Waking up", I'd not really realized of ever embarked on it. He posits that to sit, focus on thought, and trying to think in sentences takes great skill and practice. Maybe it's just me, but I've tried this recently, and went for about 10 minutes with no intrusion. More, I enjoyed it. I enjoy this way more than I'd ever thought and didn't realize that potentially everyone doesn't do this with the vigour and focus of, "thinking things through", without necessarily darting your thoughts all over the place like a mind-map until a posited solution is found. If you've never actually sat and try this, do. It's quite remarkable what you'll learn. I wonder if practicing this skill and forcing yourself to reflect and break down the deepest, darkest, intrusive, and morally incomprehensible thoughts, is the solution to our own inner peace. My study of psychology and psychotherapy makes me believe that there is no neurosis that develops from thought, just from the absence of it. Of course, I'm not qualified in this sense, but posit these ideas in a thought experiment of a sort. I do worry that the fast pace of modernity does, in part, detract from our desire to embark on this practical meditation, despite all the pros that hedonistic satiation has for our contemporary digital life. The task, look to those experts around you, those who you've already assessed as thoughtful, put-together, and competent. Reflect on them, perhaps talk to them, and judge for yourself if they're all thoughtful people. If the answer leans toward, 'yes', then practically, try, and find some space to meaningfully think through your inner dissonance.

Take care,

Tom

This week's literature review

I came across an article that was particularly interesting regarding reunification of family, in respect to kids in the foster care system. The article was centred around the Indigenous North American population and explained, in short, how significant reunification was to the kids who ended up in the care system, to the point that reunification was inevitable across the lifetime, but often not occurring until kids had at least entered their 20’s. At this point, I did a Google Scholar search for reunification, and found 220 results within 2.5 months. There has been a steady increase on relevant research on this topic over the last 5 years. There’s literally thousands of articles on the subject at this point, and my all encompassing summary about this, is that reunification and connection is of great significance to the foster care cohort. The better we can get at recognising this, and being proactive to bring about meaningful connection, the better. Many studies also point to increased outcomes for kids who exit the care system to more organic means (ie. Guardianship and Adoption), highlighting further how significant this is. In NSW, Australia, the legislation gives this great importance, but practical proactive casework 10 years into a care order is perhaps even more important to those kids than at any other time. We owe it to them to push toward this objective, by exercising temperance and child focused meaningful participation, as much as our integrity and capacity will afford.

Landers, A. L., Danes, S. M., Morgan, A. A., Simpson, J. E., & Hawk, S. W. (2023). The hole in my heart is closing: indigenous relative reunification identity verification. Child Abuse & Neglect, 106062.