Your Brain is the Ultimate Algorithm

I often find myself saying similar sentiments to lots of different people I work with. This is because so many people share similar concerns and talk about similar struggles. Because of this, I’ve developed quite a few standard examples and analogies I’ll use with clients to provide more digestible ways to present information. While many of my clients enjoy hearing the neuroscience reasoning behind why and how we do certain things, it’s often hard to translate that information into something memorable. This is where a good analogy can help increase understanding, and therefore willingness, to use skills to make change.

A topic of therapy conversations that occurs incredibly frequently is around having intrusive, repetitive, or unwanted thoughts that spring into our heads at inopportune times. One classic example is trying to fall asleep to find you can’t stop thinking about something embarrassing from third grade, or worrying about the best escape route if the house caught on fire, or wondering what a coworker meant about an off-handed comment they made. It can be tough avoiding a battle with our minds when something like this occurs. We have the urge to try to push away and ignore those thoughts and can become quickly frustrated and overwhelmed when they keep showing up. However, these battles work to increase the likelihood that we will have the same thoughts time and again.

Let’s think about our brain as a social media algorithm. Most of us understand, in a general way, how social media algorithms work if we’ve spent any time on any platform. In short, you get more of what you’ve already got. If you were scrolling through Instagram and saw a cute puppy picture and paused on that picture, just a moment longer than other content on your feed, the algorithm notices this pause and deems puppy pictures as being important to you. The algorithm will test this out a bit by sending a few more cute dog photos your way. Assuming you enjoy this content, you’ll continue to pause a bit longer on those photos. You may even like the photo, comment, or send it to a friend. Soon, you’ll notice your feed is overrun with puppy photos, videos, and things the algorithm thinks you may also enjoy based on your activity. You’ll even begin to see ads for dog food and puppy adoption (targeted ads). It won’t take long for your entire feed to be predominantly the same content. Further, if you continue to engage in this content, telling the algorithm this is what you want, what shows up over time will be less and less varied. You may get to a place where your feed looks like the same photos and videos on repeat.

Your mind works in a very similar way. If your mind notices there’s certain content (thoughts, emotions, memories, worries) that you pause on, that you consider for longer than other thoughts, that cause you to feel strong emotions, your brain determines that this is important content. Because it’s important, your brain will bring it to you again. The more time we spend examining those thoughts, especially if it’s tied to strong emotions, the more important our mind believes that specific thought to be. Just like a social media algorithm, it doesn’t take too long before we find ourselves consumed with thoughts that all feel the same. You may have already experienced this if you have particular things you find yourself worrying about again and again or negative self-talk that repeats in your mind day in and day out. The trap here, however, is the more you think about something, even something that makes you feel terrible, the more frequently you will have that thought and the harder to stop or change these thoughts.

If all this sounds familiar to you, you may be wondering what to do. Much like with social media, if you want to change the algorithm, you have to stop engaging with the content you do not want and start engaging with new, more desired content. This is easy, right? Just don’t think about the things you don’t want to think about and you’ll change what your mind gives you! If only it were that simple. While we don’t have control over what thoughts, images, and memories pop into our minds, we do have control over what to do next. Following our analogy above, this would be equivalent to content popping up on your feed that you find distasteful. It’s already too late - you can’t unsee what you’ve already seen. The same is true for your mind. Once a thought or image is there, we can’t trick our brains into unknowing. However, you can decide what your next step is.

Do you engage in that thought? Do you mull it over and think about how things could turn out if the event happens again? You certainly could and in doing so, you’re going to increase the likelihood that thought comes back. An alternative option is to engage in intentional, purposeful mindfulness. In this process, you would acknowledge the thought (because remember we can’t trick our minds by pretending it didn’t happen) and then chose to mindfully focus on something else. If you’re new to mindfulness, you might check out our blog here or pop on over to our resources tab and listen to some introductory mindfulness recordings there.

Mindfulness can help you learn how to notice your thoughts more quickly, identify how those thoughts make you feel, and then give you strategies to either keep thinking those thoughts or chose to focus attention elsewhere. Each time you focus elsewhere, in an intentional and values-consistent way (e.g., not using unhelpful or harmful distractions), you’re teaching your brain those thoughts are no longer wanted. Over time, our brain starts to learn from this process and the frequency and intensity of unwanted thoughts go down. In other words, we use our brains’ own learning processes (“algorithm”) to get more of what we want and less of the content that drives our distress.

The keys to making these changes are consistency and patience. Despite how simple this strategy may sound, using mindfulness strategies takes time and effort. Using this strategy daily (or throughout the day) and with intention can help you create change more quickly.

Kelly AndersonMarch 27, 2023