Our brain is a freak of order and control. After all, his mission is to keep us safe, so he must anticipate possible threats to alert us. For this reason, he looks everywhere for patterns that help him make sense of the past and predict the future.
Le pareidolia, which consist in interpreting a vague and random stimulus as a recognizable form, as when we see an image in the clouds, is an example of our brain's attempts to look for recognizable patterns and bring a certain order into chaos.
Even in everyday life we try to give an explanation to what happens to us. We try to understand where the noise that scared us came from or why our partner decided to end the relationship. We urgently need to find logical meaning to what happens to us. But sometimes we can get trapped in the search for meaning
The greater the uncertainty, the greater the need to seek an explanation
In 2008, psychologists at the University of Texas designed a series of experiments to test how we respond to uncertain situations. They activated participants' feelings of insecurity and lack of control and then asked them to immerse themselves in imaginary environments, such as the stock market, or to watch static images on television.
They found that people without control were more likely to perceive delusional patterns, such as seeing images on the television screen with no signal, drawing non-existent correlations in stock market data, perceiving conspiracies, and developing superstitions.
Interestingly, when the psychologists asked them to perform self-affirmation exercises, the participants calmed down and stopped looking for patterns where they didn't exist.
These experiments showed that when we feel we are not in control of our destiny, the brain invents patterns to give us the feeling of control that makes us feel more secure. Obviously, it is an illusory security, but when we don't find it, the prospect can be even worse because our brains can get stuck in the cycle of searching for meaning.
When analysis leads to paralysis
Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist who survived the Nazi concentration camps, made the search for meaning his leitmotiv. He believed that to overcome adversity we must make sense of what happens to us. However, the meaning to which Frankl was referring was not a logical explanation but a personal psychological meaning. The difference may seem subtle, but it is important.
People who try to find an explanation for everything that happens to them fall into a trap: thinking too much. It is common when we lose a loved one, especially if their death was unexpected. The first impulse is to look for an explanation. We tell ourselves that if we can understand what happened, we can overcome it. But that's not always the case.
Sometimes we can get trapped in the search for meaning. We can go over a thousand and one times on a detail that does not clarify anything because the truth is that accidents do happen and there is not always a logical explanation that can calm us down.
What our mind is looking for is the confidence that comes from control and order. We are looking for a linear cause-effect relationship that gives us back the feeling of security that we have lost. But when we face unexpected changes, chaos and unpredictability reigns, therefore, often looking for meaning leads us to a dead end.
Trying to find an explanation for everything doesn't always solve problems. If we fall into this trap, we can even confuse thinking with doing. Thus analysis leads to paralysis.
Although it is difficult to accept it, we do not always manage to find a logical explanation for things. We don't always manage to find the cause. Sometimes we can only groped, imagine or try to resolve outstanding issues. Indeed, sometimes knowledge - extolled by our society as the highest value - doesn't even offer comfort, especially when we can't do anything to fix the problem.
Sometimes that search for meaning ends up being distressing. Far from helping us accept what has happened, it keeps us in a state of denial, rejecting the facts just because they don't fit our worldview. But we must not fall into the Hegelian error of thinking that if the theory does not agree with the facts, the worse for the facts. If we do not accept the facts, we will not be able to adapt and the chances of suffering are greater.
Acceptance first, then the search for personal meaning
It's difficult. I know it. We feel the need to find an explanation for the behavior of others and for the things that happen to us because in this way we believe that we have a certain control, that there is a certain order and logic in the world.
But there are times when we need to stop thinking and start accepting.
This does not mean that we have to take everything for granted and be satisfied with the first answers or that we settle into cognitive laziness, but we must make sure that the thought does not go in loop, being completely unsuccessful.
We have to accept that we cannot understand everything. Even if it weighs on us. That we will not always find a reasonable explanation that satisfies or comforts us. That things don't always fit our worldview.
Sometimes, for the sake of our psychological balance and our mental health, it is best to stop torturing ourselves by looking for an explanation. Sometimes we just have to apply theradical acceptance. Give us permission to move on. Let go of the pain.
At that point, when we have accepted what happened, we can move on to the search for personal meaning. That meaning is not a logical explanation of what happened, but rather a subjective meaning that allows us to integrate the experience into our life story. It is not the search for causes and motivations in the past, but the search for a teaching in view of the future.
Personal meaning is what allows us to move forward. As Frankl says: “Once an old general practitioner consulted me about a severe depression he was suffering from. He couldn't get over the loss of his wife, who died two years earlier and whom he had loved above all else. How could I help him? What could I tell him? Well, I refrained from telling him anything and instead asked him the following question: 'What would have happened, doctor, if he had died before him and his wife had survived her?' 'Oh ...' he said, 'It would have been terrible for her, he would have suffered a lot!' To which I replied: 'You see, doctor, you have spared all that suffering; but now she has to pay him by surviving and mourning her death. '
“He said nothing, slowly took my hand and left my office in silence. Suffering ceases to be suffering in a certain way when it finds meaning, like sacrifice ”.
Sources:
Whitson, JA & Galinsky, AD (2008) Lacking Control Increases Illusory Pattern Perception. Science; 322 (5898): 115-117 .
Frankl, V. (1979) El hombre en busca de sentido. Editorial Herder: Barcelona.
Admission Seeking the meaning of everything can condemn you to denial and paralysis was published first in Corner of Psychology.
