Most people would like to argue that they definitely have free will and can make their own mind up about things, thank you very much. But the fact is that none of us can decide what to think or feel, only what to think about. Think of an elephant; you had no choice in what first came to mind, whether it was a toy elephant, a pink elephant or an elephant in a zoo – and now you’ve just thought of those too, even though you didn’t choose to. They were the result of a stimulus. Just like anxiety. 

You might well be wondering what on earth this has got to do with anxiety – or any other unwanted stuff in your head come to that!

Well, it all goes back to tiny lizards, our most ancient ancestors. They had just a very simple brain that had to do absolutely everything essential for survival.  Look out for food, breeding opportunities, and threats, and respond accordingly.

The thing is, that ancient lizard brain is still part of our modern brain and we are at least partly driven by it. It constantly scans our environment and responds to every stimulus as necessary. So, in the above example, the word ‘elephant’ was the stimulus, triggering an image of an elephant. You had no conscious choice in the matter because instinct is always faster than thought.

This is why you cannot choose what to think because by the time it’s in your head it’s a done deal! If you find somebody sexy, you didn’t choose to feel it any more than you could choose not to. You are only truly in charge of how you respond to what you think and feel, and even that is sometimes difficult.

And here’s the thing. That lizard brain will trigger a response to any stimulus that needs attention. Anxiety to make you take notice of a threat, perhaps gloom when you don’t have an answer for a serious problem. Any relevant response, in fact, from the highest euphoria to the deepest despair. The great news is that we discovered how to exploit that half-second gap to make major changes to just about any problematic response, and BWRT was the result!