Curiosity Junkie Episode 2 Transcript: Monkey Mind, Brain Chatter
Cassie Burton: Tracy Brady and I met in Texas through the insight timer app. I kept seeing her face come up while I was meditating, and I reached out and said, Hey, I’m new to San Antonio, would you like to have coffee? And she said yes, we hit it off, and we have been friends ever since. She invited me to join her book club and they were doing the untethered soul on Michael Singer. That book really opened my mind and kind of woke me up. So, let’s talk a little bit about brain chatter. What is it? Why do we do it? Help us understand it a little bit.
Tracy Brady: It’s great to be back. Thank you for having me back? I love talking about this stuff and, just a disclaimer. I am not the only source on any of this stuff. This is all my opinion based on what information that I have run across at what I believe works in my practice and for myself.
The way I like to look at the brain chatter this way; the brain is an organ. It’s not who we are. Our thoughts are not who we are. Our thoughts are part of what the brain does. We are separate and can direct our thinking, but a lot of people have problems with what they call monkey mind, or obsessive thinking with the brain going off on tangents that are harmful, that are distracting, that are not what we intend. And the part about that, that seems to really affect people, is they do not feel like they have control. And part of that is, that it’s true. You know, think of any other organ. Think about your lungs, for example, they exchange carbon dioxide for oxygen all the time at the cellular level, always doing that without any help from us.
I mean, if you try to stop breathing you will pass out and eventually start breathing again. And so, would you like for your lungs to stop doing what they do? I know I don’t want to stop any of my organs from doing what they do because they sort of work with a divine, lined up purpose. It’s all part of the deal.
And so the brain’s purpose is to think, to provide thought, to provide rationale, to warn us, we’ve got the amygdala part of the brain, which is the fight, flight part of our brain, which a lot of people nowadays live in, which is kind of hard. But anyway, the brain is, designed to protect us.
It’s designed to warn us. It is designed to think pretty much nonstop. You’ll see that in sleep, we’re still going, and things are getting shuffled, our thoughts and things are in a waking state. It can get to be almost like a… I’m an analogy junkie. And sometimes they work sometimes they don’t.
But what popped into my head I had was the idea that if at some point in your life, you got caught in a rain storm and it was bad. , and it soaked all of the, whatever you had. So now every time there is a cloud in the sky, your brain thinks you need to carry an umbrella. And so not only does it think you need to carry an umbrella, it tells you, you need to have it open. It not only thinks you need to have it open. You need to have a huge one and you need to wear a raincoat and a hat. So, you walk around in the sun with a raincoat and an umbrella all the time. Just in case. And that’s kind of what the brain does, it gets on a roll thinking that it’s helping us. And sometimes it gets very annoying,
But you know, when you talk about self-care and self-love, one of the barriers I think to that is our brains kind of way of motivating us. It will motivate us in whatever way it can to protect ourselves or to defend what we think is or who we think we are.
Cassie Burton: Right. “Who we think we are, who the brain has told us, we are.”
Tracy Brady: Exactly. You know, it tries. And people like to use the term ego. So, I’ll use it because people are familiar with it, but it has a negative connotation like that because the brain is designed to protect us and help us.
But when the ego gets involved, which it’s always involved, but when it takes over, we run into problems and people try to fight that and they say, I’ve got to stop that. I’ve got to stop that chatter, it’s becoming harmful. It’s not helpful. it drives me crazy. And when we resist those thoughts what do you think happens? It gets stronger because the brain senses, when we say stop thinking about this, it senses that that’s a dangerous thing to do. So any time you resist something that your brain is trying to do rather than excepted it, you say, how can I possibly, except these horrible thoughts that my brain is giving me, or these less than helpful or drive me crazy kind of things.
Or it wants me to hurt myself or it’s telling me to drink more. How am I supposed to accept that? Those are horrible things. Well, the first way to get through that is not to push them away because you’re going against everything. You must accept that the way the brain works is to protect you.
And if you’re given it something that you think that it sees as fearful or harmful, it’s going to buck up harder and stronger. I mean, think of a physical resistance, if this is a wall and this represents my thinking and I don’t like it and I push against it, the pressure that I feel between there.
Depending upon how hard I push is the suffering that I caused myself, the pain that I, that I sense the pressure, right? The harder I push, I could push so hard, I break my fingers off. The way to relieve that is not push against it, but to allow space for that. And Tara Brach does a great job of that with her rain, and after the rain, I would encourage people to look at that. But we have to allow space for things and this running away from, well when does it ever work forever. Eventually we run into a place where it stops working, and we have to find another way. So we’re always searching, so our sense of feeling at peace is so fleeting that we’re constantly, “okay, now with this ends, what am I going to have to do to get it back?” Oh my God, that just makes my heart rate jump!
Cassie Burton: One of the things I think that I discovered in recognizing that there is the brain chatter is the self-talk. For me, it was what I was telling myself, without even realizing I’m telling myself these things that kind of kept me in a cyclical pattern. I hope eventually I don’t hear those things, but constantly when I realized that I’ve just said that to myself, two things, I think you would never say that to another human being. And then I try to follow it with words like, you’re not this or that. And like you said before, when you say I love you, it feels weird and awkward. But if I sit with that for a second, it sounds dorky. I know it does, but it truly has power because you can feel it. You feel that shift in the negative to a more positive, just internal feeling. And it always makes me smile. Maybe I’m smiling at, this is quirky thing to do. Either way, it makes me smile and it brings me a little piece of joy.
Tracy Brady: Cassie it comes forth from you and what you’re doing as you’re retraining your brain and know that you’re safe and okay, and you’re accepted. And so, from that perspective, the brain is less likely to want to protect and defend and war. You know, there’s not a lion coming to eat you. It’s just, your hair is out of place or something, you know, but the way it feels inside, yourself is very scary.
One thing you mentioned was when you talked about, I hear myself say. I would encourage you to see or view the thinking as separate from yourself.
So, I noticed, or I’m aware that my brain is creating thoughts about my hair needing to be different. I noticed that I am experiencing some anxiety because the thinking is negative or detrimental. And we can question those thoughts, you know, is that true? But maybe it is, maybe my hair is out of place or maybe it is gray or whatever. Can I be okay with that? You know, the brain is a great record of the past. It’s basically a computer, you know, and it’s very regimented.
And so, if at some point I believed or the brain decided, or I had an experience where if I had… I used to have dark hair and blue eyes and all its complexion, and everybody said how wonderful that wasn’t how rare, how beautiful. Well, I got that into my head. So, when I started turning gray, it was like, there’s something wrong.
I’m not going to be as. It’s attractive. I’m not going to be as unique. I’m not going to be. And what does that mean needed my brain? My brain tells me that that’s unacceptable. That is that’s like a lion coming to eat you. So I start pouring all sorts of color on my hair, trying to make sure that I’m accepted, you know, and the reality of it is that even if I am accepted externally by the masses, because I conform to whatever the masses say I’m supposed to do to be accepted. If I do not accept who I am, I’m still going to feel unacceptable.
Cassie Burton: I think a lot of people, male, female, I think it’s the human condition that we get caught up in what other people think versus what really is important to us.
Tracy Brady: Yes. And thinking about the brain and its manner of controlling us, it can always go with what it has been exposed to. And so if I were exposed to a childhood where certain things were acceptable or certain things were unacceptable and I told myself, or I made this vow, or my brain created a rule when I was five or seven or 12 or something like that that might have helped me at that time. It was, likely something that my brain needed to create for me to protect myself. At 30, 40, 50, 60, unless those belief systems are brought to the surface. We become aware of them. We examine where they came from and make new decisions about them. They’re going to run on automatic.
One of the things that I like to say to myself, and I encourage other people, when they say I’m hearing this thought, or I’m believing this, or whatever thought is, you know, is causing suffering. I say who is saying that? Oftentimes it’s a caregiver or a parent. It’s not something that’s coming from the depths of our knowing. And often we can trace these back to conditioning and then we get to make a new decision about whether that’s serving us at this time.
Because remember the brain is all about protection. And if we decide or tell ourselves or tell the brain or acknowledge that, yes, this was a time where we did need you to think that way, and we appreciate that, but now it’s not so helpful. But still appreciate the effort that you are giving me brain, talk to it like it’s a friend, because it really is a well-intentioned friend that sometimes just doesn’t have the whole picture. You know how you will talk to a friend about something going on in your life or your relationship, and it’s almost always something bad that we need somebody to talk to. Right. And so, they’ll remember six months down the line, how your partner said something ugly to you. Well, six months has occurred, and you guys are way past it, you don’t even remember it, but they’re still on it. And they’re like that jerk, you know? Or is he still being so mean? And you’re like, what are you talking about?
Tracy Brady: That’s the way the brain thinks, it’s got your back all the time. So, when you stop and become aware of what is running in the background, and usually the only time people stop and pay attention to that is when they’re physically noticing something. My heart’s racing. I’m nervous. I’m anxious. I’m having PTSD. I’m having a anxiety attack. I can’t sleep. I have trouble eating. My guts are messed up. I have psoriasis. This is usually, I mean, your body is a highly informative tool. And if we pay attention to what messages we are allowing ourselves to believe, if we align ourselves, to run an automatic, a lot of those things can be cleared up.
Cassie Burton: Yes, the thing you said that kind of stuck with me is your brain is your friend. I don’t think I’ve looked at it that way. I think I’ve been looking at it more like it’s telling me things that aren’t necessarily good for me. Instead of appreciating, like you said, why would I say that and who is saying that?
Tracy Brady: How are you trying to protect me by saying this? What automatic programs are running in the background of my experience and my subconscious that is informing my cognitive expression that I’m hearing today.
Cassie Burton: Do you think some of that has to do with the stories that we tell ourselves? And you tend to start that story when you are young and at the time, it served you and over time, maybe it’s changed. And the story has gotten bigger or it’s, developed into a full-blown movie. And that story is constantly running in the back of your head. So, when something does come up from the brain, the story kicks in, or even in life, that story kicks in. Is that the brain also? That story telling that you’ve held on to, what is that piece?
Tracy Brady: Well, you know, you’re reaching into a, what I consider the brains part in creating our reality. The Brian’s a file system. And it expects like when you were two years old and you know, you learn what a ball is and you, you learn that it’s round. And so, every time the two-year-old, you have a grandson, right?
Cassie Burton: Yes, Sam. And he is adorable!
Tracy Brady: And so, when that little guy learns to say ball and he knows what a ball is, you may take him out to, Somewhere. And he may see something round and say ball, it’s not a ball, to him, everything round is a ball. And so. The brain is very similar to this and it will say, Oh, it looks like somebody is being ugly to me because it has the same kind of characteristics in my experience for when I was 13 or something, you know?
And so we get very defensive and we get very on alert and we say, this person, or this thing is bad and it’s trying to hurt me and stuff. When in fact. I mean, they may be, they may be, you got to pay attention to that, but more than likely, it’s a call for us to examine what we’re carrying as far as defenses that may or may not still be helpful.
A lot of these things that we carry with us, a lot of these messages and vows and programs that our brains continue to perpetuate the coping mechanisms that got us through some difficult times. And so, in that regard, we really do need to be thankful, for the way our thinking, has gotten us through some of these difficult times, but they don’t always need to continue. And sometimes they don’t always need to continue at the same fierceness, you know, we’re not always getting eaten by a lion.
When I was in school, I was eight years old in third grade. Everybody had on bell bottoms, you know, and I didn’t have any bell bottoms on that day. And so, I felt very much like I was not accepted. And so that feels in my body, like a threat. And, you know, humans are the only creatures that we’re aware of, that I know of, that our brains don’t know the difference between what is actually happening in our experience or something we’re imagining.
Because think about it. You can imagine yourself at the beach, you can hear the ocean, and you can smell the breeze and the salt air. And you could feel the sand and the sun, the heat of the sun, warm your body, and even the terry cloth of your towel. I mean, you can really experience me there and you’re not there.
So, if you think about it, if your brain is creating these or coming from a scary scenario, for example, that we’ve experienced in the past, because it’s a record of the past. And it says, this is also a ball. It’s really a very, interesting concept, but one that starts with awareness, awareness that we are not our thoughts.
We do have some ability to work with our brain, although we cannot stop it. And nor should we want to, because it’s the only thinking part that can carry messages down to my fingertips when I touch a hot flame. So, we don’t want to shut that thing off. It’s important.
Cassie Burton: Right. I think that’s amazing in that I, during this time together, I’ve just had a complete mind flip. I don’t know what you want to call it in that I, I really, from reading that book and recognizing the mind chatter, I was really kind of almost in a battle, I think over the last few years with trying to not really turn it off, but to quiet it.
Instead of being able to accept it, which I think speaks to how I have always dealt with things. Push it down, quiet it. Don’t talk about it. Ignore it. Everything is going to be okay. Which I don’t know if it’s just me, but I feel like a lot of people do that. We are not taught to deal with our emotions, with our feelings. And so, it’s easier just to ignore it. So, I’m so glad you said that you really have to look at it, but it is your friend. You wouldn’t want to turn it off. It’s like your lungs. It does help you breathe. It keeps your body moving. It does protect you. And that is its sole purpose is to protect you. And I think now that I look at it that way it will feel more like a team effort instead of a battle, which is fantastic.
This is one of the reasons I love talking with you, I always get something super powerful out of it. I think I have shit figured out, and then I go, Oh, wow, I get it now.
Tracy Brady: Well, that’s awesome.
Cassie Burton: I hope somebody else out there got something out of today’s episode. Anything else you would love to share with the world?
Tracy Brady: I’m very grateful that somebody, like you, will allow me to have a place to speak this stuff, because I really believe that it can help a lot of people be more at peace with themselves and then bring more peace to the world.
Cassie Burton: Absolutely. And I am so grateful that you want to be a part of this and share your knowledge with me and the rest of the world, I think it’s phenomenal. So, thank you.
And thank you all for tuning in today. Have a great day and stay curious!