Joanne Smith explains how the brain learns to anticipate threat and protect the body, even without physical damage. This protective expectation makes it hard to shift toward positive outcomes because the brain actively seeks evidence confirming its protective beliefs. Sudden, large positive expectations usually disappoint; meaningful change requires gradual, step-by-step adjustment instead.
We know that frequently there's no damage in the body. We can have pain, we can have symptoms, but we can have no damage in the body, which seems crazy, but this is very possible. So because the brain has learned to expect a certain thing, this is where people can't— it can make it more difficult to shift. To expecting a better outcome, um, because the brain will do everything it can to stop you from expecting a better outcome too, and it will always be looking for evidence to prove what— that to be true, like to justify the protection. So you can't go often, it's really rare that people can go, um, straight to having this amazing expectation that tomorrow is going to be an amazing day, everything's going to be so much better, it's really rare that you can do that in one step, and because when often, most of the time, that doesn't happen, you've had all these high hopes and these really positive thoughts and big expectations that, you know what, tomorrow I'm going to wake up and it's going to be a great day, and like, it's going to feel brilliant, And then you end up feeling really, really disappointed because your brain is doing the best it can and it's expecting, without us even having a conscious awareness,
