What's Your Brain Code?

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I’ve heard it said that coding runs the world. Coding makes possible a computer’s operating system as well as how websites and apps function. Facebook is made from code, as is the website you are using to read this blog, and the operating system you charged up when you turned on your computer or smartphone.

As a college professor, it’s easy enough to get caught up in the coding fever. Students ask whether they should go to coding boot camp to acquire the in-demand skill, like a present-day equivalent to the traditional foreign language requirement. (By the way, learning a foreign language remains a very valuable skill across many fields of endeavor.) Colleges and technical institutes, ever mindful of providing career-oriented training opportunities to recruit more students, are offering a range of coding classes to help students acquire this bankable skill.

What is coding? While this is admittedly oversimplified, we can think of computer code as a script that is written in a programming language that computers use to execute various functions. Computers “speak” a binary language, so coding is a process of translating common English (or another human language) into a binary language that machines can understand.

So much for computer coding, but what is a brain code?

Coding is useful as a metaphor for how the brain works and how it can misfire. I think of a brain code as a mental script or template. The brain filters daily experiences through these codes, another name for which is a schema. In therapy, I work with clients to identify the malignant scripts or schemas and replace them with more adaptive coding. Here are a few examples of what I would call malignant brain codes:

• Nothing I ever touch works out.
• There’s something really wrong with me.
• I can’t possibly deal with this.
• People will always disappoint you, so what’s the point?
• Unless I feel perfectly competent, I’m just not going to try.
• It’s safer to feel sad than happy.
• When bad things happen, I assume it’s my fault.
• Whatever I do is just never good enough.

Let me expand upon some pieces of bad code, based on my case experiences:

Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop

This piece of code lies in wait, becoming active whenever anything good might happen along. Then it zings you with that little voice that says, “Don’t get excited. You know it all turns to crap.”

I'm Never Good Enough

No matter how successful or accomplished you may be, it’s never enough to satisfy the critical voices in your head that are always putting you down, finding fault with you, and harping on your limitations. Derek, a 30-ish, single man, talked about how he hadn’t made any friends in high school and wound up shutting himself off from the world. There were times he would try to impress girls in his class but felt—no, knew—that he was going to screw up.

He remembered how others would give him dismissive looks and how afraid he was that they would start laughing at him. Many years later, he is still plagued by memories of high school when teachers called upon him in class and he didn't have the answer. It was so humiliating, he said, a feeling he couldn’t erase no matter how successful he had become.

Limiting Expectations

A similar script, but this one is focused on scaling back expectations. A woman in her mid-40s would say how she felt that everyone had doubted her: “Their attitude always was, you're never going to achieve, so why bother? Just limit your expectations. Never set goals, since something will always happen to prevent you from achieving them."

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Preserve, Protect, and Defend (Everyone Else)

I’ve seen this code at work in patients who subordinate their own needs to those of everyone else, who have a sense that their place in this world is to hold everything together, to preserve a status quo that might be dysfunctional to the core, but is still preferable to facing the threat of it all falling apart. So what happens is the person rationalizes or explains away the actions of others, defends them at all costs, all the while suppressing their own needs and wants.

Crying Over Spilled Milk

This is intended here as a metaphor, but it was literally true in the case of a patient who accidentally spilled milk one day and immediately felt like an abject failure, thinking how stupid she was, how clumsy, how awkward. Rationally, she understood that spilled milk is just, well, spilled milk.

But even a minor act of carelessness pierced her at a deeper level, exposing a malignant code that brought back feelings of awkwardness and incompetence as a child, of being less capable than her classmates and being ridiculed by them. Even at age 60, the earlier wounds surfaced whenever the code was activated, at times when she felt she did not measure up in some way.

Putting Others Down to Prop Yourself Up

This code calls for you to make others feel worse so you can feel better. Your sense of self-esteem is so shaky that it needs to be continually buttressed by making others feel smaller. You need to be right, and others wrong no matter what, no matter where the facts lead, and no matter how hurtful your actions may be.

Changing Your Brain Codes

Changing your brain codes is not a simple process of search and replace. It may involve work with a therapist to help you uncover these codes and work to replace them. But there are several steps you can take to identify and challenge bad codes in your brain. Remember, it only takes a minute to change a thought.

First, Find the Code

Whenever you feel a negative emotion, ask yourself, “What am I saying under my breath? What thoughts are bouncing around in my mind?” Ask yourself...

• What am I saying to make myself upset?
• What thoughts run through my mind whenever I’m upset?
• What script keeps playing in my mind?
• What do I say to myself whenever something goes wrong?

Second, Put the Code to the Test

Take a good, long look at the scripts in your brain. Find the bugs in the code by asking yourself...

• Why must I think this way? Who says so?
• Whose voice does it sound like? Whose words are these?
• Are there different ways of thinking about this?
• What evidence supports this belief? What evidence challenges this belief?
• Is it logical or reasonable to think this way?
• Is it helpful to think this way? Or is it harmful?

Third, Rewrite Bad Codes

Work on rewriting a brain code by substituting other ways of thinking. Repeat these new thoughts so that they become etched in your brain. Whenever a piece of bad code pops up, try a rewrite by asking yourself...

• What else can I say to myself instead of repeating this old script?
• What healthier thoughts can I practice to write a new script in my mind?
• What’s holding me back from rewriting my brain code? It's my mind, after all, which keeps repeating these thoughts.

Fourth, Practice Makes Perfect (Well, Maybe Good Enough)

Nobody’s perfect, but through practice, we can become good enough. Brain codes are like TV reruns that replay day after day. If it’s a bad code, it gets you to put yourself down, to find fault with yourself for just about everything, to curse the world and your place in it, or it leads you to make choices out of fear rather than growth choices that can improve your life.

Whatever code your brain is running has no other power over you than the power you bestow on it. Like a tired, old rerun, it’s time to change the channel and try out a new way of thinking. In therapy, I work with patients to identify the malignant codes in their minds that trigger negative emotional reactions, like anxiety, depression, guilt, and worry, and to substitute healthier ways of thinking.

Isn’t it time you called for a rewrite of the bad codes in your brain? If you need a coding coach, contact a cognitive behavioral therapist in your area to help you sort through the muck and mire of bad codes that are causing personal misery and needless grief.

(c) 2019 Jeffrey Nevid