Does our brain understand the difference between reality and imagination?
Brain the most complex yet most simple organ of human body. Complex because it’s structure and functioning is very vital. Science is still trying to learn all aspects and functioning of the brain. And simple because when you try to understand from the psychological point of view, it is just an organ for processing our thoughts and converting them into actions.
Psychology defines brain as “The brain is the organ located within the skull that is responsible for cognition, mental processes, and control of the body and its functions. It is the location of perception, ideas, thoughts, conscious movement, and unconscious body functions like heart rate and digestion.”
Here, we will try to understand a small aspect of the brain that may help you to overcome and win over very important and crucial situations in your life.
Does our brain understand the difference between reality and imagination?
We will try to understand this today.
Please consider that you are sleeping and having a dream that you got hit by a car while you were driving somewhere and you are in a terrible state. What is your state? You are in a dream, nothing physically is happening to you but you are experiencing the same amount of pain and emotional thrust as you would have in the real situation.
Isn’t it a validation that our brain cannot understand the difference between reality and imagination?
Still not convinced? Let’s consider another example.
Suppose you had some bad situation in the past where you have suffered from emotional, mental or maybe physical stress or pain. Now, even after months or years after it has happened if you remember it you fell some emotional draft of the very same situation that had happened long back. You draft yourself from present to past and experience the emotional ups and downs of that situation and again back to the present.
Where this all doesn’t happen in reality but does happen in your brain and you feel it for real. Here the brain is not able to differentiate between the reality that you have overcome the situation and when you remember about the old situation it illusions it to be happening it at present and releases the emotions and chemicals that seems to be appropriate to that situations.
As the brain has all the control over our body both in physical and mental terms, it causes the imagination or illusion to seem like reality by releasing the emotions and chemicals in our body.
Many times people wake up haunted from their dreams, start crying all of a sudden, feel a drop in their mood because of some memory that got flashed in their brain where nothing happened in reality but brain release the hormones, chemicals and emotions as a reaction to that dream or memory (illusion) thus making us horrified or emotionally down.
So, now it’s clear that our brain cannot understand the difference between reality and imagination.
What next? How this does help us? Or is it good or bad for us?
First of all, as it applies to all things this inability of the brain to understand the difference between reality and imagination is not good or bad. The way we see it or use it makes is good or bad.
So what next? How does it help us?
As said above you can take this inability of our brain as good and bad depending on the way we make use of it.
People who keep thinking about their past or keep thinking that the problem that they are facing is the biggest problem in the world and they cannot overcome it, cause the brain to release hormones or emotions that make the thoughts feel as real as the brain cannot understand the difference between reality and imagination.
On the other hand, people when in a tough situation can think of themselves winning over it and have a positive attitude thus causing the brain to release hormones or emotions supporting the above statements and giving you the emotional strength and confidence needed to overcome that situation.
Whenever you think of some situation or some obstacle, stop yourself and think that whether that situation or obstacle is really that big as big you are thinking it to be or it is just an illusion that you are thinking to be real because of your thoughts.
When you get an answer which is much closure to reality, you will find your thoughts to be more realistic and more possible to take action on. You will find that the obstacle was a mountain only in your brain, in reality, it is just a matter of perception.
Thus, our brain cannot understand the difference between reality and imagination. And as we know it now, we can use this knowledge to stop thinking our obstacles to be big and align our thoughts to reality and take more appropriate actions to overcome the obstacle.
