It’s Not the Situation—It’s What’s Already Inside You

Have you ever heard the phrase "The ghost in the machine”?  

In technology, it’s used to refer to something unknown that interferes with the proper functioning of a program, sometimes also known as a glitch in the system.  

The ghost in the machine is, to me, the perfect way to explain some of the odder things we do as humans, and is a good way to explain what’s happening when experiences from our past are activating in the present moment and interfering with how we normally behave.  

Our nervous system and certain parts of our brain often have a reaction to something that is happening now based on something that happened in the past. We often experience irrational thoughts feelings and behaviours affecting ‘a now’ moment even though the now is nothing to do with, or like, the past. Without realising it, we’re constantly interpreting the present through the lens of the past and we’re moved by redundant impulses which we cannot explain to ourselves or others. 

As Sendhil Mullainathan explains in his work on scarcity and stress, when the brain is under pressure it doesn’t default to logic or long-term thinking, it narrows its focus and looks for immediate relief, which helps explain why these past-driven reactions can feel so compelling in the moment even when they don’t make sense. 

We’ve all experienced a time when an ordinary situation or remark elicits a reaction that doesn’t seem quite warranted, a reaction or comment that’s full of annoyance, anxiety, irritability, coldness, panic or recrimination. Everyone is confused. The behaviour makes little sense when you try to understand it according to the current circumstances or facts. And you can’t understand it logically because it’s not happening from the logical part of the brain. We keep re-living the past over and over and over and over. We’re dealing with present situations and people as though they are situations and people from the past. 

These ghosts in the machine can leave us with chaotic feelings inside which propel us to do do all kinds of things to comfort ourselves;  

• Eating  
• Drinking  
• Tiding obsessively  
• Using work to ward off anxieties  
• Gambling, shopping, drinking, smoking and so on 

These ghosts in the machine can give us difficulties in articulating what’s on our mind when we’re worried, because we ourselves are not really clear on the source of worry because it’s the pistons from the past firing and not normal rational thinking. Our logic mind is saying one thing – “it’s ok, there’s nothing to worry about, everything is fine” – whilst our nervous system and brain are, much less convinced. 

So if the logical mind is saying one thing and the rest of us is pulling in another direction…what exactly is running the show in those moments?