# Stepping Out of Automatic Pilot



## Daniel (Aug 29, 2011)

Stepping Out of Automatic Pilot
By Steven Hayes, _Get Out of Your Mind_

...Cognitive loops can carry us into the most dysfunctional places we can imagine.

One loop: I so feel awful life is not worth living. Another loop: I will feel better if I'm dead. Pull the cognitive loops tight: entanglement, attempts, or even "success." Push the loop: try to convince yourself that life is worth living. But in either case, vitality goes down while life is put on hold. Dealing with cognitive shoelaces is just so boring and lifeless.

The problem for us all is this: lots and lots of things can put cognitive loops in front of our mental hands. Logic will do it. History will do it. Abuse will do it. The TV will do it. Any idiot with a microphone can do it.

Even an old bald guy you never met can do it.  Let me show you.

Take your time to imagine a person who has this very scary thought:

I'd be better off _______.

What just came to mind when you saw the line on the screen with no words above it? If you thought "dead" welcome to how this cognitive system of ours works.

In this blog I did NOT say (go back and look) "I'd be better off dead." But between the "meaning" of words and the theme of this message, an old bald guy very few of you have never met can evoke a word, working with nothing but the pixels on the screen and your likely history.

And there it is. There's a loop.

I'd be better off _______.

When a depressed person sees that loop emerge in her mind the urge to pull can be enormous. Agree with it and do something. Disagree with it and prove it wrong. But either way, take it seriously. Pull, push; Click, click; automatic pilot mode.

It order to be whole and human inside this modern world of chatter that we have created we need to learn how to shift out of automaticity.

What would happen if we respectfully declined the mental demand to pull at our own cognitive loops, or to push them away and show they are wrong.

This is the third alternative. Take a breath, slooooow down, and with curiosity consciously watch the loops form. Keep your hands off them. Do nothing. Stay inside that choice point. Be patient. Gradually another path will open up: Maybe you can move toward what you care about with your thoughts as they are.

Voila. Thoughts are no longer causal. They were a "cause" of behavior only inside a particular social / verbal stream; a system.

The next time the newscast, or your spouse, or the newspaper, or the bad behavior of the driver next to you gives you a couple of cognitive loops to pull, slooooow down. Create a gap amidst the automaticity. There is another alternative. Create a gap and just watch how minds work, and how the idiots behind the microphone program them.

In that gap, a freer life can be built. In that gap, humanity has a chance.

_Steven Hayes is the co-developer of Acceptance & Commitment Therapy.  His most popular book is Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life._


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