Contrary to popular belief our behaviour isn’t siloed into distinct areas across survival, emotion and thinking. When we show up in the world those elements and many more are entangled. Our nervous system is a complex live system calculating energy requirements and safety (physical and psychological) assessments. The often overlooked component to how we navigate and behave in the world is the power of prediction.
Our nervous system works on prediction driven by our experiences especially from our formative years.
Often we don’t know if our experiences were ‘healthy’ or not, it is just ‘our normal’.
Emotional dysregulation and unhelpful behavioural patterns are often governed by prediction errors not our (now famous) amygdala going into overdrive. The 24/7 predictions our brains are making are utilising our entire system, logic and emotion are not fighting with one another.
It can be hard to see the wood for the trees when we talk about prediction errors so lets talk through some examples:
A soldier returns home from combat and the nervous system is still working from the prediction pattern that life is constantly under threat. A sound, smell, a conversation, an action, etc, the prediction pattern has not updated, that the war zone is no longer happening in real time.
Now lets delve a little deeper with a different kind of example.
A person gets up to ring the bell on the bus and feels moderate fear and shame in their body. The prediction pattern is working from patterns laid down as a young child where they were told to be quiet and they were useless. Internal thoughts are “if I press this bell, I will annoy everyone, everyone will look at me, I will bring attention to myself, etc”. The feeling of fear and misplaced shame is produced to avoid the limelight i.e don’t press the bell.
Prediction is vital for survival, to navigate this world we need the prediction models to work out of our conscious awareness, this is energy efficient and logical. It keeps us ahead of the game.
But not helpful when the prediction patterns are wrong, no longer helpful or misunderstood.
As we know the brain is highly adaptable and neuroplasticity allows for change so in the right environments, with the right people, prediction errors can be overridden or eased.
If you want to explore your own prediction errors the main ingredients needed are:
Curiosity. Daring to gently question and ask why you think and feel a certain way can lead to amazing changes.
Pattern recognition -seeing a bigger picture of how your own behaviour and the behaviour of those around you fits together.
Cognitive flexibility- allowing yourself the grace to admit when you are wrong and being brave enough to change your mind or point of view.
Exploring the concept of self requires a multifaceted approach across biology, psychology and philosophy. Our prediction modelling is also multifaceted but ultimately to change or update any prediction errors we have to change experience(s).