Feeling Resentful or Stuck in Your Relationship? It Might Be Your Reticular Activating System!

Feeling Resentful or Stuck in Your Relationship? It Might Be Your Reticular Activating System! / When you’re angry at someone, it’s easy to focus on “all the problems” in that particular relationship. When you do this, you start to see the negative and unwanted behaviors everywhere. Essentially, you prove yourself “right”.

This happens because of a little-known, but very important part of your brain circuitry, called your Reticular Activating System, or RAS for short. Your RAS is like a filter between your conscious and subconscious minds. It takes instructions from your conscious mind and passes them on to your subconscious. You’re constantly giving your RAS instructions by what you’re thinking about -- the problem is, you don’t even realize it.

So if you’re thinking, “My partner is always nagging me”, the RAS hears this as an instruction or order: “Look for my partner nagging me.” Sure enough, your partner is “always” nagging- you hear it constantly. If you’re thinking, “My mother is always criticizing me”, the RAS follows through on this order also and you’ll hear your mother’s criticisms in every interaction you have with her.

The RAS is one of the reasons why you will “suddenly” notice a lot of pregnant women when you’re pregnant or the amount of Nissan Pathfinders on the road after you buy one.

The good news is that you can deliberately program the RAS by thoughtfully choosing the exact messages you send. If you really want to find forgiveness or happiness with your boss, friend, partner, or sibling, you need to shift what you’re focusing on and be conscious of the orders that you are giving to your RAS.

Here’s a 3-step method to get in charge of your RAS and move from resentment and anger to forgiveness and appreciation: abbymedcalf.com/the-3-strategies-for-forgiveness/