Stress- Mind Game

Virtual tigers are in the individual's mind frames. What is real to you? It is not things that happen around you or within you. What is real is what you think about the things. Even though plenty of things happening around you, you automatically and selectively pick up few events that are of interest to you. Rest of the events will be discarded by your filter. This is a selective attention. Even then the selected events will not get into your mind as they are. They are coloured and projected to the mental screen how you wanted that to be. This colouring is based on the life experiences and individual faith & value system. So, it is a kind of double filtering process that happens automatically.

Because of this double filtering process, the mind thinks in a certain way. Since these filter and tint are different for different persons, the mental projection for the individual's is different. Hence, they think and act differently for the same incident. As said earlier, what one thinks that is what is real to him and hence, he acts differently than others. If he thinks that the incident present in front of him as a threat then it is one hundred percent threat for him even though in reality the incident is absolutely safe. Simply, because what one thinks that is what is real to him.

The entire system then follows the cues of his mind and responds accordingly. If one feels the event is a threat then automatically stress response kicks in followed by the whole array of the physiological and psychological cascade of responses. This can be easily explained in the context of a dream which many of us would have experienced at least few times. Let us assume that one gets a dream where a tiger chasing him. The body reacts to this thread by pumping up his heartbeat, increase the level of sweat gland, increase the breathing rate and so on. Even though the threat is not real but still the body reacts as if the threat is real. If one instantly comes out of the dream to his consciousness, he can still feel those rapid changes and the body reactions clearly.

This is how sometimes when the filter and glasses that are used for the projection into the mental screen are not perfected then probably one may live completely in a kind of a situation similar to the dream state. He thinks the event is a danger while in reality, it is completely safe.

"One may end up spending the entire life unrealistically if the mental projection glass and filter are not perfected "