alendi - Human Givens - Pattern Matching

Human Givens - Pattern Matching

What is written here is our own summary and interpretation of some of the ideas presented in the Human Givens book and training provided by Mindfields College. For a full description please refer to the book "Human Givens: a new approach to emotional health and clear thinking" by Joe Griffen and Ivan Tyrell.

The human brain is a pattern matching organ - this is a fundamental given of human nature - a Human Given.

Examples
Pattern matching is what we do
Knowing implies pattern matching
Patterns in life
Patterns which get stuck

The way in which our behaviour forms a response to the world in which we live is explained by the APET model. This model makes sense of the idea that we can find ourselves driving somewhere, arrive and have no conscious memory of the journey. Once we have learned to drive it becomes a subconscious process. Out thoughts may have been occupied with the day ahead, but if a child had jumped into the road we would still have applied the brakes and most likely drawn our conscious awareness to what was happening.

Examples

We have probably never seen anyone who really looks like the picture on the right. But we instantly recognise it as a face from the position of the major features. We match the picture to our internal template for "face".

We may jump because of a sudden loud noise. It may be that some earlier experience has been matched and the old emotion re-evoked.

When a partner gives us a quizzical look it may trigger an emotion from an earlier experience which was in some way similar. No words may be spoken but we may jump to conclusion about the "meaning of that look" before we are even conscious of it. This is an example of "black and white" thinking.

The murderer who stands in court and says "but I didn't mean to do it" may be telling the truth. When our "buttons are pressed" (which is a metaphor for a pattern match) and the resulting emotional arousal is sufficiently strong we act without conscious thought.

Imagine that a young mother is in a crowded supermarket on a hot day. The queue at the checkout is long and moving slowly. She has to be at the school to pick up her child in fifteen minutes but is going to be late. She feels tense and anxious. She feels that she can't breath and longs to just be back at home. The next time she finds herself in a slow supermarket queue she re-experiences that emotion. She may experience severe anxiety. She may start to feel stressed whenever she goes to any supermarket. Before long she may be experiencing full blown panic and anxiety attacks and feel reluctant to travel from her home. This is pattern matching.

Pattern matching is what humans do

Our brains are pattern matching all the time. It is a natural human instinct to seek patterns in nature and our environment. Science is the quest of looking for the underlying patterns or rules of nature. Usually it is the simpler patterns which have the widest implications. Einstein famously said "everything should be kept as simple as possible - but no simpler". Art explores the similarities and differences, connections and contrasts between different patterns and sometimes the emotions they evoke. Sequences of musical notes create patterns which we call melodies. Fairy stories often illustrate common patterns of behaviour. We are very quick to recognise and react to patterns in everything around us. Often the process is conscious but once we become aware of some of the unconscious patterns of behaviour we can start to unlock our own behaviour.

Knowing implies pattern matching

To get an idea of the importance of pattern matching let's briefly consider what it means to really "understand" something. When we feel that we have learnt something new and really understand it, we are usually relating the new concept to an existing pattern or metaphor. We say "its like so and so" and name an example.

Lets consider what it means to understand what happens when we make a note with a musical instrument such as a piano.

We may understand that that a piano looks like a piece of furniture and has keys which create a note when pressed.

If we want to deepen our understanding we may investigate the connection between pressing a key and hearing the note by examining the internal mechanism. We may understand that pressing the key causes a hammer to move. This "hammer" strikes a string which vibrates, causes the frame of the piano to resonate emitting a sound.

But if we examine each element we find that "hammer" is a metaphor for something which can be used to strike something else. We may not need to know exactly the shape, weight, materials and colour of each individual hammer in order to understand its action. We also probably have a pattern for the generic concept of a string in a musical instrument. A thin element attached at each end, free to move in the centre and kept under constant tension - the weight, length and tension determining its natural frequency of vibration. We generalise the idea of "vibration" to be a pattern of repetitive movement. We have an image in our mind for what "the frame of a piano" might be like although we probably do not feel the need to visualise every dimension of every part. We understand that the labels "resonate" and "sound" refer to sensory experiences. As we go deeper and deeper into trying to "understand" the piano we are drawn into more and more detail until we consider the physics of sound - the way in which a pressure wave can propagate throughout a gas such as air. The internal details of the inner ear, the nature of perception. We go further and further until the metaphors we have chosen can usefully predict the behaviour of the piano. We stop this process as soon as the metaphor is sufficient for the purpose of our understanding.

We can always go deeper - into quantum mechanics and the nature of matter if necessary. But it is interesting to ask "at what point is it accurate to say that we understand what a piano is?". The point here is that when we think that we "understand" something, we are really saying that we can relate it to an existing pattern or metaphor. We know through metaphor. Knowing implies pattern matching.

Patterns in life

An essential part of growing up is to be exposed to a huge variety of patterns and to choose the ones which work for us. For example we need to have a pattern for what it means to "share" something, to "take turns" and to "take control". Children thrive best when they can feel that there are "limits" to what is acceptable behaviour. The reality of the concept is often more important than precisely where those limits are placed. When we over exert ourselves it is useful to have a pattern for recognising when our body is telling us to stop and rest. Without this we can go on regardless and burn ourselves out.

The more patterns to which we are exposed, the more possibilities we have for dealing with life's circumstances.

Patterns which get stuck

Sometimes we can get stuck on a pattern which does not serve our needs. This can happen for many reasons but is often a result of how we allow ourselves to think.

If we are exposed to an unexpected event in which life is threatened or perceived to be threatened and we become "frozen in fear" then the extreme emotional content can become imprinted in our minds as a traumatic event. We may then find that innocent triggers which happen to remind us of the event cause us to involuntarily re-live the disturbing emotion of the event. No matter how much we rationalise about it we cannot escape the sense of panic and anxiety which is triggered whenever we are exposed to these reminders. You may recognise this as a description of PTSD or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

There are other ways to reinforce patterns. If we constantly think about, worry about or rehearse thoughts and feelings in our mind over and over again with the same emotional content we can build them up into patterns which subconsciously affect our behaviour. This works both for positive and negative images. The actress or sportswoman who psyches herself up before a performance is reinforcing a pattern for success. The person suffering from depression who constantly beats themselves up for being so hopeless does the same thing. The pattern may become so ingrained that we act in certain ways in response to certain stimuli even before we have a chance to think about our intentions.

If we have a mild fear of for example spiders, if then we feel a sense of panic every time we experience a spider, then over the years we can build up the response pattern to such an extent that we become almost incapacitated with fear at the slightest sighting. Remember that a high degree of emotional arousal prevents us from being able to think properly - we are reduced to acting on impulse no matter how "unreasonable" that behaviour may seem to our rational mind. Emotional arousal makes us stupid - it causes "black and white" thinking. See the APET model for a description of how this works. Normal thinking (the kind which gives us the ability to distinguish "shades of grey" rather than just the extremes of "black and white") can be regained using the 7/11 breathing technique.

There is good news concerning patterns which arise due to traumatic events or constantly reinforced phobias. The VK (Visual Kinaesthetic) Rewind technique or "Fast Phobia Cure" is extremely effective at reprogramming patterns arising from traumatic incidents so that they lose their power to automatically invoke an emotional response and become instead merely narrative memories. In other words, memories that we can recall at will but do not send us into a fight or flight state or a state of anxiety.