The fact is that the majority of our thinking and actions are on autopilot. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing either. Our habits, routines, impulses, and reactions carry us through our lives so we don’t have to stop and think about it every time we wipe our ass or start a car.
The problem is when we’re on autopilot for so long that we forget we’re on autopilot. Because when we’re not even aware of our own habits, routines, impulses, and reactions, then we no longer control them they control us. Whereas a person with self-awareness is able to exercise a little meta-cognition and say, “Hmm… every time my sister calls me and asks for money, I end up drinking a lot of vodkas.
The biggest difference is that because these are people who are just doing the right thing in life, they have the brains to think about what they are doing and think about what they are doing. If we were on autopilot, we would have been able to get the wrong things done, but instead we would have been sitting around in denial and thinking about what we were doing.
The only difference between that and the person with meta-cognition that I mentioned is that we have a mental model of how to do things. We don’t. We can use our brains to do our jobs, but we don’t know how to use them. If we were on autopilot, we would have been able to figure out what we were doing, but instead we would have been sitting around in denial.
I see tonsillectomy as a case in point. You use your brain to do your job, but you don’t know how to use it. If you were on autopilot, you would have been able to figure out what you were doing, but instead you would have been sitting in denial.
This is where the cognitive dissonance comes in. I have a lot of friends who are really smart (and not at all neurotypical) but are prone to cognitive dissonance. This happens when the world does things to us that we think should be happening or when things we think should be happening don’t. For me, it’s something that I’ve had to learn to deal with when I was in medical school.
The cognitive dissonance comes from seeing a doctor who can’t diagnose what you truly want to know. It comes from seeing a doctor who tells you to take the pill, when that’s usually what you need to avoid eating. It comes from seeing a doctor who thinks you’re a liar because you didn’t want to take the pill, when most people are just really stressed they’re just taking the pill for a stress reduction and then stop when they feel better.
A lot of doctors get off on this kind of rhetoric. They think that by giving you a pill, they can give you the answers you dont want to hear, or that because you are a liar, you dont deserve to have your health taken care of. The problem is that pills are the wrong answer. They only work if you have the right kind of brain chemistry.
The problem with pills is they’re not really the right answer. You still need to eat healthy, exercise, and take care off the stress that can build up in a pill.
While I dont think most doctors would agree that a diet of carrot juice and yogurt is a good idea, it does seem like a good idea. When I was a kid, I had a lot of trouble learning how to eat on my own, and I had a lot of trouble learning how to exercise. I can only imagine how much easier it would be for me if I had some sort of healthy diet.
