Too Much Me?
The Switch of Internal and External Focus
Me, me, me me
Recently after Check Engine Light class a student asked me if I thought a person could become too sensitive to their internal indicators. My answer - yes, of course. While a big part of my living is helping people become more aware of their internal signals it can definitely reach a tipping point wherein we can become hyper-sensitized to signals that they create a problem where there isn't one or exacerbate an existing minor problem. This is akin to pulling the fire alarm simply because somebody has a lighter in their possession regardless of whether or not it happens to be lit. For most of the audience that I work with the opposite is true, the building is on fire and they're smoking a cigarette. However, the concept of hypersensitivity does bring out a salient point worth deeper discussion:
When and how should our focus be outside of ourselves on the task at hand and when is the appropriate time for internal focus?
I'm not completely certain I have the complete answer but I'm going to use this article to work out some thoughts based on my experience both as a human being trying to solve this problem myself as well as a human performance practitioner who has helped athletes reel it in from both ends of the continuum.
The Dimmer Switch
We are wired to pay attention to our environment. Most of the threats to our survival are for all intents and purposes, out there. Most of our conscious neurological faculties are built to sense and digest information from the external environment so that we can solve problems with automatic adjustments in our physiology and psychology. The feedback loops are fast and without any need for our top down adjustment. This focus on sensory information coming from the external environment is called exteroception.
On the other end of the spectrum is our ability to sense and make sense of our internal environment. There are of course sensations, feeling, and alarm bells that we have access to that we collectively interpret to summarize the internal condition of our bodies and minds. These feedback loops can be automatic as well but we can also become more and more apprised of exactly what they mean and make conscious efforts to redirect their potential vectors. This collection of sensory information coming from our internal environment is called interoception.
Exteroception are not like a toggle light switch - it's not one or the other. It's more like a dimmer switch that slides back and forth constantly based on the demands of the situation. Our ability to drive our attention to execution of necessary tasks is an essential component of real-time performance. While our ability to accurately sense and alter our internal state can help us sense potential threats to our well being that may be occurring too much focus there can be disruptive of our ability to perform and under some conditions, even worsen our state of being.
For example, too much self-consciousness in the moment of execution in a sports performance environment is well known to disrupt efficient expressions of movement and problem solving. Athletes can "get into their heads", lose track of effective routines that historically prepare them for execution, and even forget game plans they'd rehearsed many times before. Too much sensitivity, especially when there's a negative valence to the way the information is interpreted, can snowball in the wrong direction.
So how do we adjust accordingly?
How do we know if we need more internal or external focus?
Let's begin with the starting line.
The Starting Line
In this case by starting line I mean a person's natural proclivities. Do they tend to overthink and ruminate on thoughts and feelings for long periods of time or can they put the blinders on and only think about what's happening right in front of them?
There are those of us who are certainly innately biased to one or the other of these proclivities and here's the thing - neither is right nor wrong. Artists and dreamers tend to live in the land of feelings and so can sometimes get bogged down in their internal life. The same is true for those of us who tend towards the higher side of trait Neuroticism. Sensitivity to negative emotion in general can certainly move the needle to the "too much me" side of the starting line and thus encumber external performance capabilities.
The ability to execute rewards domains of performance but costs big on the back end. On the other hand, lack of awareness in regards to internal signals creates bigger downstream problems - the primary focus of this entire Substack.
Hypersensitivity to internal indicators can come from lots of different places - personality, previous performance failures, poor coping strategies, acute fatigue, trauma, and physical injury can all play a role in too much focus on what's going on inside instead of what it is you're supposed to be doing.
The far ends of the interoceptive and exteroceptive continuum look kind of like this:
Overthinking and underdoing - Hesitate to pull the trigger and sometimes get caught cycles of doubt and/or rumination.
Overdoing and underthinking - Rarely hesitate and sometimes pay interest on poorly thought out decision
What's important is to realize what side of the dimmer switch you tend to lean towards and take steps to mitigate the downsides of your inclination. Another key consideration is that while we all have a general or overarching tendency, these can slightly change relative to contexts we find ourselves in.
Execute Now, Reflect Later
This kind of encumberment happens quite often when I go to jiu jitsu or firearms classes. Rather than staying fully engaged in the task at hand (the most robust source of information available to solve the problem) students get stuck in the spin cycle of how they are interpreting their feelings about their own performance. Wrong time, wrong place.
When we are in environments that require our immediate external attention such as when we are acquiring a skill, enduring a hardship, or just getting some plain old fashioned work done it's time to move the dimmer to external focus. Then we move our focus to internal sensitivity and dialogue to reflect and make sense of our experience.
Don’t Toggle About
Like everything, there's a time and place for these natural capacities. Learning to shove all internal sensations aside and drive whole heartedly into the current action is important under conditions of acute performance.
The best course of action I've seen is to not fight with your own nature but to instead be honest about what side of the spectrum you tend towards. By doing so you can leverage the positive aspects of your being while bolstering your vulnerabilities.
Thanks for reading,
Rob
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