Do you need A Stroke of Insight?
On the 6 hour drive to South Shields the other week, I listened to a fascinating audiobook recommended by a good friend of mine called “My Stroke of Insight” by Dr Jill Bolte Taylor, a Havard trained neuroanatomist who suffered a rare form of stroke at the age of 37.
Dr Jill describes what she experienced when the bleed took hold of the left side of her brain, rendering her temporarily unable to walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life.
It took eight years for her to completely rebuild her brain to recover all physical, emotional, and thinking abilities, but the book is far from depressing.
She described how she felt a wonderful feeling of peace as the left side of her brain became incapacitated.
At times, she said she almost didn’t want to go back to how she was before the stroke, and she made definite choices about what thoughts and behaviours to allow back into her life, because she realised it was her left-brain processes that were responsible for emotional pain, and she recognised that certain thoughts could be extracted and put aside without losing the core of who she was.
Of course, that’s not to say the left-brain is bad - it’s important for so many things such as language, number skills, reasoning, and scientific skills, whereas the right-brain has regions responsible for imagination, holistic thinking, intuition, arts, rhythm, nonverbal cues.
Also, the two sides of the brain work together - for example, although processing words is a left-brain activity, noticing tone and context is a right-brain activity.
The two hemispheres don’t work in isolation, but they do have distinct regions.
There are too many interesting points in this book to put in one post, but one I discussed with a client this morning was the 90 second rule Dr Jill described:
“When a person has a reaction to something in their environment, there’s a 90 second chemical process that happens in the body; after that, any remaining emotional response is just the person choosing to stay in that emotional loop. Something happens in the external world and chemicals are flushed through your body which puts it on full alert. For those chemicals to totally flush out of the body it takes less than 90 seconds. This means that for 90 seconds you can watch the process happening, you can feel it happening, and then you can watch it go away. After that, if you continue to feel fear, anger, and so on, you need to look at the thoughts that you’re thinking that are re-stimulating the circuitry that is resulting in you having this physiological response over and over again.”
Sometimes, we feel as if we get hit straight in the face with a negative person or situation, and feel powerless to our reactions.
Next time you feel out of control, remember the 90 second rule.
It’s OK to allow yourself time to process the chemical reaction in your body, and after that point, set your thoughts on a better path.
Ask yourself good questions like, “What’s the best way to resolve this situation?” or remind yourself that you have no control over other people’s actions and reactions, so you need to direct your energy to dealing with your own.
It takes a while to master good responses to difficult situations, and being coached can help you drill in the necessary thought patterns.
The link’s below or in my bio if you want to find out more about working with me.