Viktor Frankl was a psychiatrist who lived through the horrors of a concentration camp in WWII, he was so close to dying at so many different points that when you read his biography of his experience you are left wondering whether a higher power exists or whether it was just plain luck that he survived. His book ‘Man’s search for meaning’ is required reading as part of becoming a well rounded adult, not a statement I make often about a book.
One of the key points he makes in his book and in his lectures in his later life is that we as humans have freedom, and that freedom is the freedom of choice.
To put it more in context, Frankl said that we have stimuluses’ that trigger responses in us. The most well known research on triggers and responses comes from Pavlov’s Dog experiments (Pavlov, 2010). Where dogs were trained to associate the sound of a bell with the experience of being fed. The ringing of the bell then caused the dogs to salivate once the cue of the bell has been cemented as a trigger representing the arrival of food. While that’s a fun example about dogs, we behave similarly as humans. As an example, you show someone a drawing you did, they laugh, it subconsciously reminds you of a moment in childhood where someone laughed at your drawings, and instantly you feel hurt again in almost exactly the way you did as a child. The stimulus was the laugh, the response was the feeling of hurt. Yet, the person might not have been laughing because they disliked the drawing, maybe the painting genuinely sparked joy in them – hence the danger of automated responses – we can have triggers that cause inappropriate responses.
What Frankl says about triggers and responses is that we have a miniscule gap between the two, where as humans we can choose our response. What makes Frankl’s book so powerful is that it would be easy to dismiss his arguments, and say ‘that’s not true - what about if you were in jail – you can’t choose then’. Yet Frankl got to observe some of the worst of what humanity has ever created and observed time and time again people making choices about their responses in the face of overwhelming pressure to choose differently.
Now are those choices easy? Definitely not. They are difficult and painful and hard at times, but to deny the existence of those choices is to deny our own power and freedom – not something that I would encourage. The freedom of choice and our own internal power to decide what is suitable for us is fundamental to being human.
Now like all important things, there are some nuances or caveats around this. The first is that this gap is miniscule. If we are low on awareness, then we might miss this gap completely, and move right over from trigger to response without really noticing the gap at all. Part of our response might be to have our defence mechanisms triggered. The result is that our reptilian brain kicks into fight/flight/freeze/ or if you are female tend-mend (from now on we’ll just call it fight/flight) responses, and we loose all connection to our executive functions of our brain. In these moments we loose a lot of our conscious power of choice. Breathing and mindfulness exercises are the key to regaining access to those executive higher level brain functioning (Kiran, Kaur, & Thaman, 2011). When we are in panic mode the brain thinks there is an existential threat that might end your life and is doing everything it can to neutralise that threat. In that moment, your higher cognitive functions have ceased to be accessible to you.
When we are in the fight/flight mode we have basically lost control of who we normally are. It’s like your computer starting in ‘safe mode’ there is only the basic programs left operating. One of the few programs still operating that we have conscious control over is breathing. We can train ourselves to regain control of ourselves through breathing in a way that has been labelled ‘mindfulness’ or ‘meditation’. Mindfulness is helpful on two levels. The first is that it allows us to notice the triggers, and notice the response. In doing so we can begin to pry open the space between trigger and response, and through training begin to make this space fractionally larger.
The second way that mindfulness can be helpful is that when we miss the gap, and end up in unhealthy or destructive responses associated with the defence mechanisms, mindfulness can help us be aware that we have crossed over, and help provide a path back towards a space of more choice. If mindfulness is new for you, then I suggest checking out the app headspace, they have free trials and have done much of the heavy lifting of providing an introduction that is useful. They have a free 14 day trial of 10 minute daily mediations, this is an excellent place to start.
As a side note, there is nothing religious about this, and neuroscience is only just beginning to scratch the surface of how powerful mindfulness is. Think of it like exercise for the brain, it’s generally incredibly healthy to do exercise for just about everyone. The same is true of mindfulness, it’s incredibly healthy for just about everyone, but not everyone. Also, the way you meditate might be of crucial importance, it seems like longer doses or long retreats can more often be associated with problems (Consider perusing Willoughby Britton’s work if you are interested). I suggest approaching mindfulness with caution, though the majority of evidence seems to be overly positive.
The key point here is that our key freedom as humans is to choose our response. In order to do so we must first begin the process of noticing the triggers, the response and the gap between the two. In doing so we can begin the process of acceptance or intervention in deciding which response we feel is most appropriate for us.
If you acknowledge or accept that this freedom exists for yourself, then from a point of consistency you must also acknowledge and accept that this is also true for others. They have the freedom to respond however they like and in what ever way they consider appropriate. Now they might not have control over their responses, but that’s not the point I am trying to get at. My key point is that we have the freedom to respond as we like, and so do others. Therefore, we need to also be mindful of the way we try to influence others responses.
References
Kiran, A. A. K., Kaur, D., & Thaman, R. (2011). Impact of meditation on autonomic nervous system-A research study. International Journal of Basic and Applied Medical Sciences, 1(1), 144-148.
Pavlov, P. I. (2010). Conditioned reflexes: an investigation of the physiological activity of the cerebral cortex. Annals of neurosciences, 17(3), 136.