Fear Shrinks the Mind
Editor's Note: Sharon Salzberg is one of the most loved teachers in the Ten Percent ecosystem and in the broader meditation community. For the next couple weeks, we’re celebrating the publication of her new book, Finding Your Way. Thanks, Sharon, for all you do to help us wake up and get real!
Think of the last time you were lost in fear. The last time you were harshly unforgiving of yourself. The last time you felt trapped. The last time a craving was so strong that all reason and common sense fled (remember, for example, those old infatuations). The last time any sense of potential change collapsed and you fell into hopelessness. Those are times we experience limited options, the blunting of our creativity, a feeling of disconnection, the dimming of our vision of what is possible.
Think of the last time you were lost in fear. The last time you were harshly unforgiving of yourself. The last time you felt trapped. The last time a craving was so strong that all reason and common sense fled (remember, for example, those old infatuations). The last time any sense of potential change collapsed and you fell into hopelessness. Those are times we experience limited options, the blunting of our creativity, a feeling of disconnection, the dimming of our vision of what is possible.
Judson Brewer, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist who has done a lot of research on anxiety and addiction, once said to me, “My personal practice comes together with my lab’s research in exploring the experience of contraction versus expansion and how that manifests in the world in so many ways.”
Jud began by telling me about a dynamic web of interconnection in the brain called the default mode network. The posterior cingulate cortex (PCC)—the hub of self-referential habits—is a key part of this network. In his research, he found that “when people were feeling guilty, they activated the PCC. When they were craving a bunch of different substances, they activated it. When they were ruminating, they activated it. When they were anxious, they activated it.”
What Jud and his team found was that the PCC correlated with a feeling of contraction: “The experience of anxiety, of guilt, of craving, of rumination—all of these—share literally an experiential component of contraction. We contract, and we close down.”
None of this is to say that contraction is bad or wrong to feel. But if it becomes chronic, we begin living more and more in a world of tunnel vision, of auditory exclusion, of distorted perception, of narrowed interests, of joy that is right here in front of us that we miss simply because we don’t see it. Our perception of options, of possibility, of aliveness, fades.
We suffer.
Learning to be aware of these narrow straits, and changing how we respond to them, is crucial. “If we read the news and read something that pisses us off, it is that reaction of contraction that feels bad,” Jud explained. “So we may have this urge to make ourselves feel better by firing off a tweet, writing an email, eating a cupcake. This perpetuates the entire process. If we’re not aware of our habitual responses, we not only may make things worse for ourselves, but also for society.”
What we are working to evolve is an inner environment where we can surround that state of constriction, of holding back from the flow of life, with spaciousness, ease of heart, and kindness. Cultivating that radically changed relationship is the essence of the journey to being free.
Sharon Salzberg is a renowned meditation teacher who played a crucial role in bringing mindfulness to the West. Sharon is a New York Times bestselling author of nine books, including Lovingkindness, Real Happiness and Real Love.
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