WHEN INFORMATION COMES TOO FAST

When you think for a living, you deal with lots of information and in today’s world, it can be overwhelming. Many struggle to just keep up regarding what they need to read. Then there’s the problem of integrating what you are reading and learning. This is the knowing—doing gap that we speak about a lot in Neuro-Semantics.

Now dealing with information, thinking about information, processing information, communicating information, is similar to dealing with food. With both, you have to take it in and chew on it. That’s the metaphor Max Wertheimer used in Gestalt Psychology and which Fritz Perls later used in Gestalt Therapy. They compared how you respond to information with how you deal with food.

To eat healthily requires that you cut up your food, chew it thoroughly, swallow it, and digest it. Only then can your body turn the food into fuel for the body (metabolism) as well as new cells for the body. But what if, instead of chewing and digesting food, you swallowed it whole? That would not be good.

Analogously, when a person swallows an idea, a belief, value, or a process (ritual, pattern, habit, way of being) whole, that isn’t good either. Then it doesn’t get digested. Instead it gets lounged inside and experienced as something foreign. It doesn’t get integrated. In Gestalt Psychology and Therapy the process that describes this is called introjection. Instead of digesting information, you introject ideas and learnings thereby preventing integration.

People who introject an identity, a belief, their parent’s values, their culture’s operational patterns experience, don’t make it theirs. Lacking integration they struggle to know who they are. They live with alien aspects within themselves. Attempting to be accepted and approved, they accept introjects from others. But since they do not integrate them, they feel foreign. In the end, they don’t know who they are. An introject often shows up a rigid programmed way of responding.

The solution is to take the introjects of family, society, religion, media, etc., cut them up, to chew them over, and masticate them thoroughly—to truly digest them. Only then can you sort out what fits for you and what does not. Only then can you truly become an integrated person— your true self and true to yourself.

Conversely, anxiety is highly correlated to living with lots of introjects. You will tend to fear failure, loss, disapproval, rejection, and criticism. What others think of you and say of you, and how they may blackmail you to fit in, do as they want, etc. —these are things that operate as your

primary concern. No wonder you will feel yourself torn, alienated, and disingenuous. You can’t be real and authentic and feel good about yourself by living with the introjects.

Living with introjects may also explain why you might find discipline unacceptable, even intolerable. After all, if you spend your time and life fighting against what everyone else is telling you to do and imposing shoulds on you, then you might also be fighting yourself when you tell yourself what to do. Your shoulds may be introjects within you.

How do you relate to the instructions, rules (at home, school, society), understandings, identities, etc. that you encounter in life? Have you integrated them? Or have you introjected them? If you have introjected them, then no wonder you find these meta-dimensions alien. No wonder you have internal conflict around them. No wonder they feel like rigid and unreasonable demands. If that’s the case, the challenge today is to free yourself from the introjects.

But how? The integration process begins by flushing out the conflictual shoulds in your mind. To do that, simply begin to listen to the times when you use the word should. Many shoulds are introjected reasons for acting. Ask, “Why should I follow this or that rule or instruction?” “Is there a good reason?” If so, choose it. If not, discard it. In this way you can begin to clean out the imposed and introjected shoulds that come from other people.

Next, take responsibility. This process also requires that you step up to own your choices about beliefs, values, lifestyle, rules, etc. A false should is a should that someone else wants for you, but that does not fit for you. Once you’ve done your mental processing and critical thinking, you can reject it. Then you can choose the shoulds that are empowering and which fit your values. That presupposes both recognizing and acting on the actions and responsibilities as an expression of your ability-to-respond.

While all of that is taking place, unpleasant emotions may arise. Worries, anxieties, fears, angers, etc. may emerge as you explore introjects and step up to responsible ownership. For these emotions, simply allow the feelings to arise so that you can delve into them— find out if they are legitimate or illegitimate. Are they dated emotions due to a childish “need” to fit in and gain the pleasure of others.

Some introjection is subtle. It may occur when you read too fast, rush your studies, and do not take the time to thoroughly chew on a thought. You swallow an understanding or belief without thinking it through and exposing it to critical thinking. Thinking for a living means taking the time to truly think things through. It means digesting your mental and intellectual meals. It means slowing down and chewing on an idea, rather than reacting. Probably a really good idea in the current pandemic of fear.